The volume starts with an all but modest claim: In the introduction, the three editors — French historians of technology — announce “the first overall study of the global history of techniques in the contemporary period” (p. 11). To achieve this goal, they recruited experts from many different fields and a diverse set of disciplines, ranging from the area studies of China, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union to agricultural and environmental studies to the histories of education, gender, and law. The contributors predominantly stem from the European and especially French research environment.

The editors decided to focus on “techniques” rather than technology to disentangle the field from a “predominance of science” (p. 12, 17). The book defines “techniques” as “a set of actions and processes and their cumulative material manifestation in objects produced by human beings” (p. 13). Notably, the book aims to highlight “the relationship between techniques and globalization” (p. 16), offering “a truly global history of techniques governed by multiple temporalities and heterogenous technical cultures” (p. 94). This includes emphasising divergent forms of user-agency and local reconfiguration alongside the long-dominant focus on innovations and events (e.g., pp. 15, 18, 100, 124, 137, 236).

The editors divided the book into three sections, which respectively feature chapters focusing on regions, sectors, and issues. The opening section on regions tries to avoid the “mostly Eurocentric meta-narrative” by providing “a world tour of techniques” (p. 11). For example, this world tour introduces the reader to navigation techniques in Oceania, steel making in Japan, and the railways of Latin America. The second part, which focuses on specific technological sectors, includes chapters on textiles, hydraulic engineering, and industrial computing. Finally, the last third of the book provides a critical point of view, often by looking at the connections between technology and society, and features chapters on developments such as patents, Taylorism, and pollution. The publisher provides a table of contents with all 44 chapters on its website.

The edited volume implicitly follows the “handbook” format, which has become popular recently. What makes a handbook remains ill-defined. As stated in the introduction, “each author was […] left free to choose a particular element or approach” (p. 20). All authors intentionally limited their chapters to an introductory overview of a specific region, technology, or issue rather than aiming for a deep analysis based on a particular research question. However, the chapters follow different strategies to offer the readers this kind of overview. Some are primarily reviews of an academic discipline (p. 161). Others focus on the history of the technology itself (pp. 71, 100, 282, 338, 403). While some chapters try to outline a subject matter in its entirety historically, many authors structure their chapters around themes or case studies (pp. 44, 70, 100, 220, 546, 730). Some chapters revolve around a hypothesis or an argument (pp. 83, 235, 519) or propose a theory (pp. 179, 262), while most are primarily descriptive. Consequently, chapters do not necessarily lead towards a profound conclusion. As one author remarks, fitting a whole field into a single chapter always runs the risk of generalisation (p. 129). In the end, the reader also must realise the genre-specific limitations of a handbook and digest the chapters accordingly.

The best chapters accomplish the feat of weaving a review of the field, a historical sketch of the subject matter, and several meaningful case studies together into one coherent picture. To name just a few remarkable examples: Cecila Calheiros’ chapter on body techniques is simultaneously a historical overview of “how human life is governed so as to improve human bodies” and a historiographic review of how researchers have uncovered the body’s “close connection to the construction of identity” (p. 644). Similarly, Patrice Bret’s chapter on the interplay between war and technology dives into diverse topics, from colonial warfare to the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI). He embeds these techniques into a discussion of historiographical trends, including a table of different ways of periodisation (p. 587). These chapters also feature rich bibliographies of eight and nine pages, respectively. For comparison, the chapter on food preservation limits its references to just half a page.

Whereas the editors and several individual authors pronounce their rejection of diffusionism (pp. 15, 120, 235), even calling the paradigm “a mere fiction” (p. 19), this hostility is never fully explained. Given the book’s focus on the last two hundred years of global history, the influence of Western inventions remains undeniable. As the second part of the volume focuses on specific techniques and especially technologies, the contributors to these chapters rightfully designate much space to mostly European origin stories. Whereas this emphasis on the so-called Western world, especially England and France, of many chapters appears to run somewhat contrary to the egalitarian doctrines of the editors, most chapters nonetheless succeed in integrating other world regions into their stories. I was surprised that when I ran a named entity recognition analysis on the eBook version to test my suspicions of a predominantly Western narrative, various countries in Africa, East Asia, and the Near and Middle East popped up frequently, revealing a much more balanced handling of the different world regions than the subjective reading experience suggested. Precious are those passages where global entanglements are made clear (e.g., pp. 100, 142, 246) rather than discussing developments in different regions apart from one another. As the introduction emphasises, techniques “never travel in a straight line” (p. 30).

The hardcover version makes for a particularly satisfying reading experience, not least because of the excellent quality of the many illustrations. There are some easy-to-spot typos (e.g., pp. 13, 86, 117, 257, 297, 358, 506, 650, 713) and a screenshotted Excel table (p. 615) should have been converted to a proper table, but not many readers will read this book from cover to cover, instead picking chapters of their interest—making this scrutiny unwarranted. Personal note: What Putin has been conducting in Ukraine is not a “military action” (p. 212) but the escalation of a war.

In sum, the edited volume presents overwhelmingly well-crafted overviews of various regions, topics, and issues concerning the history of techniques and technology. The individual chapters are particularly recommendable for lecturers and students as introductory readings and for every researcher planning to enter the field of the history of technology, as they will immensely profit from the rich bibliographic reviews and references.