A memoir made out of scraps, How to Change History lacks some direction, I felt. Maybe that is the nature of such a project, which Hemley calls a salvage project, using ephemera and little memories to piece together a life and some ideas about stuff as a concept. I wasn't huge on it. I had a hard time following the project.

This book is a salvage project about how we view history. That's about the only thing I could figure out about this book due to the disjointed nature of this book. The personal stories interspersed with commentary on history can be done well, but I am not sure it was done well here...

"How to Change History" by Robin Hemley contains thought-provoking insights into the ways in which we may view history. These insights were buried in narratives I found unappealing in part due to its disjointedness. The book does deliver on its promise to be a salvage project but I do not believe I was the right audience for it.

I'm not really sure how to classify this book. There were some definite interesting insights, but the author discusses health scares and a lot of introspection interspersed between explorations of figures. I'm guessing it was recommended to me for its title, and I gladly took time to read it but I'm not sure who the audience is or what the larger objective is.