Sixty per cent of new mothers have abdominal separation at the six-week check — the exact appointment where maternity care ends. Half a dose of SPF 30 gives you SPF 5.5. A married woman in one Swiss canton could not vote until 1991.

Seventy-four short chapters on the machinery of ordinary life: borders, food, money, work, rights, bodies, the things we own, and what gets remembered. Every claim researched before it was written, and labelled so you can see exactly how solid it is.