Literary Criticism: Though Francis Bacon declared, in 1625, that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested", he also knew that the printed word can work in even more mysterious ways; Bacon added that "some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others".
Paradoxically, many of the books named by Melvyn Bragg in his book of books are among the great unread and will remain unread by washed and unwashed alike. But Bragg convincingly argues that his 12 Books that Changed the World have shaped and coloured and determined our physical, social, political, sexual, economic, religious and imaginative lives the world over. The ideas they contain and their imaginative drive have filtered down and we owe their genius a great debt.
Exhausting and inexhaustible, lists, in another's hands, could have been a tricky, gimmicky project or a solemn, pretentious, intimidating one; or, worse still, all of the above. But Bragg's congenial and generous presence is open and inviting from the outset and his enthusiasm and understanding of the material is that of an eager learner, never an important know-all.
But, first, what we all want to know. The list that goes beyond "What's Hot and What's Not": Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687); Married Love (1918) by Marie Stopes; Magna Carta (1215); The Rule Book of Association Football (1863); Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859); On the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1789) by William Wilberforce; Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); the three-volume Experimental Researches in Electricity by Michael Faraday (1839, 1844, 1855); Patent Specification for Arkwright's Spinning Machine (1769) by Richard Arkwright; The King James Bible (1611); Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and The First Folio (1623) by Shakespeare.
Already we can spot the oddities: one book - by Wilberforce - began its life as an impassioned four-hour speech to parliament; the Great Charter from the 13th century was written on vellum, "the ink was made from gall - a liquid that comes from the mounds on oak trees formed when the gall wasp lays its eggs on the bark"; Richard Arkwright's Patent is only three pages long. But the 30-year-old Wilberforce, "short, snubnosed and weak eyed", effected "a seismic shift in opinion" on slavery; the Magna Carta "has become the book of the foundation words of the free world", and Arkwright's "entrepreneurial genius and his bulldog determination" - another Michael O'Leary? - introduced "mass-produced, low cost, universally desirable goods and laid the foundation for the mass consumer market".
It's a British list from when Britain was great. Bragg has thought his project through and admits that, though his original list was dominated by the "Ancient Greeks, books of God, Marx and Mao", in the end he confined himself to Britain. He clearly shows how a dot of an island and its books have had not only global influences [ work practices in India, the American Constitution, leisure activities - FIFA has more member countries (204) than the UN (191)] but influences that are out of this world: "Newton took us to the moon".
Marianne Moore's "omissions are not accidents" is irrelevant. Bragg points out that it's 12 books not the 12; and, because he came upon the books randomly, he thinks "the higgledy-piggledy" arrangement "more honest and appropriate than the chronological". The result is a dynamic read.
Each work is contextualised. Each discussion draws on expert analysis and alerts us to other influences, before and after. Tyndale's vital work made possible the glorious King James Bible; Thatcher and Reagan reintroduced Adam Smith's idea "to great and often devastating effect". And Bragg entertainingly offers vivid glimpses and anecdotes, endearing or otherwise. Marie Stopes courageously promoted equality in marriage and birth control. A reclusive Darwin, who wrote 14,000 letters as part of his research, found in the Galapagos animals so "oddly docile" that he "poked a hawk with his gun barrel". An absorbed and solitary Newton, in one experiment, "pushed a bodkin, an ivory toothpick, underneath his eyeball almost right to the back of the socket." Or Hemynges and Condell's description of Shakespeare, whose "mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot on his papers".
One of the most enjoyable chapters was on the "global language of football". Hardly the most important of the 12 but with "more than one and a half million teams and 300,000 clubs", The Football Association Laws by "a Group of Former English Public School Men" has promoted reading among schoolboys, caused the 1969 war between El Salvador and Honduras, "has been more effective than anything else in Britain in combating racism", and this summer "eight out of 10 people in the world are expected to watch something of the World Cup".
No Freud? No novelist? But didn't Freud claim that wherever he went, Shakespeare has been there before him? And, though Bragg is himself both a novelist and a passionate reader of fiction, he wanted books that "rootedly" changed "the lives of people all over the land - people on trains, people at airports . . ."
I began 12 Books on a train; I finished it on a plane. The engineers, mathematicians and scientists transport us; the lawmakers and freedom advocates guarantee our freedom; the lads behind me were talking football; male and female passengers lived, without knowing it, perhaps, a sexual life made possible by Marie Stopes. And where was Shakespeare? Sir Andrew Aguecheek sat across the aisle listening to his iPod.
The creators of these works include the un-intellectual, the eccentric, the early school leavers, the selfless and always the brilliant. Some were sustained by their deep belief in God; Darwin's Origin "pointed out in reasonable terms that the universe had no need of God".
This is an inspiring, fascinating and stimulating book with marvellous illustrations and the equally good TV tie-in. There's a TV tie-in, like Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, restores our faith in the box and has us thinking outside it. And the most memorable, inspiring and empowering sentence in the book is Newton's. Asked how he had come upon his theory of gravity, he said: "By thinking on it continuously." Now that's worth thinking about.
The Great Unread: 12 Books that Changed the World By Melvyn Bragg Hodder & Stoughton, 372pp. £20
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin. Poetry Now 2008, a Leaving Certificate poetry textbook, which he edited, has just been published by The Celtic Press