This book investigates the history of the passion to collect from the Renaissance to the present day. Every object of collection, whether a box of matches or the nail of a martyr, has a meaning that transcends the object itself; Is a totem. And the incessant eagerness to possess it makes the collector a cultural anthropologist. Philipp Blom distills the themes that underlie this seemingly so unassailable passion: conquest and possession, chaos and memory, a void to fill and the awareness of one's own mortality. "A chronicle on the rarity of the human mind, and the wonder of the world, splendidly written, fascinating, amusing, amazing" (A. C. Grayling, The Financial Times). "Brilliant ... It is to the history of collecting what eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey, to Victorian times" (Bevis Hillier, Literary Review).