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THE LEGO STORY

How a little toy sparked the world's imagination.

by Jens Andersen ; translated by Caroline Waight ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2022

A welcome gift for the LEGO lover in the family and a revealing work of business history as well.

A cultural and business history of “a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child.”

A few dozen pages into his narrative, Danish journalist Andersen turns up a fact that might surprise fans of LEGO (he follows company practice in capitalizing the name but without its customary trademark sign): The idea for the molded plastic bricks was borrowed from a British firm, which led to a patent investigation. “With a handful of pieces like these,” as Andersen reconstructs founder Ole Kirk Christiansen’s aha moment, “any child would be able to copy real-life tradesmen and become their own masons.” That utilitarian note is unsurprising given that Christiansen ran a profitable construction firm that survived the Great Depression in part by building things such as ladders, high chairs, and, yes, toys that placed children in adult roles. In Christiansen’s carefully thought-through ideology, it went both ways: Children might play as adults, but adults, he urged, needed to recapture the spirit of childhood play. Andersen links this attention to child development with a sweeping cultural movement. “In the 1940s and early 1950s, several landmark children’s books were written in Scandinavia,” he writes. “For the first time in world literature, adult writers dared to make children and childlike characters the first-person narrators of children’s books, giving children natural-sounding voices.” Christiansen would go on to build an empire of toys that expanded in many directions under the care of his descendants—the company is wholly family owned—and eventually led to another treasure: LEGOLAND, the much-beloved Danish theme park. Not every LEGO experiment panned out, and entering the American market (at first in an unlikely partnership with Samsonite, the luggage manufacturer) proved difficult, but the company has continued to thrive.

Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-325802-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Mariner Books

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022

BUSINESS | BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | ENTREPRENUERSHP | SALES & MARKETING | GENERAL BUSINESS

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BOOK REVIEW

by Jens Andersen translated by Caroline Waight

by Jens Andersen & translated by Tiina Nunnally

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New York Times Bestseller

POVERTY, BY AMERICA

by Matthew Desmond ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2023

A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.

A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted .

“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.

Pub Date: March 21, 2023

ISBN: 9780593239919

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | POLITICS | BUSINESS | ECONOMICS | GENERAL BUSINESS

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by Matthew Desmond

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Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2023

by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | POLITICS

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by Walter Isaacson with adapted by Sarah Durand

by Walter Isaacson

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Blocks – the monthly LEGO magazine for fans

The ultimate LEGO magazine for fans. Providing inspiration, techniques and going behind-the-scenes with LEGO experts.

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination – the Blocks review

The LEGO Story : How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination – the English translation of Et Liv Med LEGO – is the authorised biography of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and a history of the LEGO Group. Blocks reviews the new book to see if it ‘s an essential addition to your LEGO bookshelf.

Blocks magazine has been covering the 90 th anniversary of the LEGO Group in 2022, with a special issue and articles throughout the year looking back at LEGO history. It therefore seems fitting that the year should be closing out with the English language release of The LEGO Story – an authorised history of the Kirk Kristiansen family and, inevitably, the little company that they founded. It’s available to pre-order now and will be released on November 15 in the USA and November 24 in the UK .

Read an exclusive excerpt from the book in Issue 98 of Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine – available now !

Titled Et Liv Med LEGO (Life in LEGO ) in Denmark, the book is clearly a biography of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. For the English language edition, the title has been changed to The LEGO Story : How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination , perhaps because Kjeld Kirk is a less well-known figure internationally (sacrilegious as that might be for LEGO fans to hear).

To get in-depth LEGO material every month, subscribe to Blocks, the LEGO magazine for fans – and get issues at a discount and earlier than the shops – order a  12-month  or  24-month  subscription. Direct debit payment options are available too; to find out more get in touch via  [email protected] .

The life of Kjeld and his family is intertwined with the history of the LEGO Group though – so this book goes all the way back to the beginning and tells the story of how three generations of the Kirk Kristiansen (or Christiansen) shaped the company. Jens Andersen – who has authored biographies for the Danish royal family and other significant figures from the Nordic country – must have meticulously researched the family’s history, as he has unearthed details from Ole Kirk Kristiansen’s time in the early 1900s that have not been published before.

As this is an authorised biography though, Kjeld’s voice is present throughout. Direct, lengthy quotes from the man who shaped the modern LEGO company reveal his reflections on the events that Jens Andersen is presenting. These are absolutely fascinating, sometimes providing an amusing bit of colour, sometimes giving his perspective from the time and sometimes – in the book’s most interesting passages – giving his reflections now on what occurred decades prior.

Whether it’s assessing his own management style, finding more empathy for his father’s workload or revealing more about his family than he has done before, Kjeld is surprisingly candid throughout The LEGO Story . He doesn’t hold back from discussing his difficult relationship with his father Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, which proved particularly fractious after Kjeld took over the company.

The difficulties between Kjeld and Godtfred will be the thread in The LEGO Story that is newest to those who already know a lot about the company’s history, but that is far from the only part that will pique the interest of LEGO fans. The book goes into more detail about Ole Kirk’s struggles getting the company off the ground, Godtfred pushing through new initiatives at a breakneck pace and Kjeld navigating illness while trying to keep the company profitable in the 1990s.

What The LEGO Story balances so well are the various strands of LEGO history that are so fascinating. There’s the story of the LEGO Group as a company, how it grew from a few staff in a rural Danish town to thousands of employees around the world. There’s the story of the philosophy of play, how each generation of the owning family continued to build on the company’s purpose. There’s the very human story of how generations of a family feel a burning desire, as well as a responsibility, to build on and safeguard their parents’ legacy.

The LEGO Story is absolutely essential reading for every LEGO fan. If you know nothing about the company and founding family’s history, then this is the perfect starting point. If you already know a lot of it, then this is packed with new information that you haven’t heard before. Whatever you do though, make sure you finish any urgent build projects before you start reading – this pacey, enjoyable book is really hard to put down.

The LEGO Story is available to pre-order now and will be released on November 15 in the USA and November 24 in the UK .

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The LEGO Story Book Review

Posted By Adam White on Dec 15, 2022 | 1 comment

LEGO® Books come in many forms and cover many aspects of the brand and its fandom. But the book I’m taking a look at today is unlike most other titles. As the name suggests, it tells the story of the LEGO brand from the very beginning, that’s even before a single wooden toy was ever crafted. The history of the LEGO Group is a long one and over that time many things have happened. This book offers an in-depth recollection of that history with help from someone who knows it well, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. So here are my thoughts on The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination.

Product Description

The definitive history of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family who still owns the company.

This book tells the extraordinary story of a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child.  The LEGO Story  is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play,  The LEGO Story  also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand. 

• Book Title: The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• RRP: £25.0/$25.00
• ISBN:  9780063258020
• Formats:  Physical & Digital
• Availability:  Online Book Retailers

Whenever I become interested in a company I like to delve into its history. As a Leicester lad, I charted the rise of Walkers Crisps from humble beginnings as a butcher. When I worked at WHSmith I revelled in the fact that Smith’s created the early ISBN system. As a gamer, I enjoyed discovering how Nintendo opened love hotels and sold noodles for a while. The same can be said about my interest in the LEGO brand. Two books I really enjoyed are very similar to The LEGO Story, which are Game Over: Nintendo’s Battle to Dominate an Industry and Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. Not titles which roll off the tongue but they do excellent jobs of charting the long histories of Nintendo and the LEGO Group.

The LEGO Story is by far the most comprehensive history of the LEGO Group. It begins before Ole Kirk Christiansen even stepped foot in the small carpentry workshop in Billund and follows the LEGO story through to the present day. It’s not been plain sailing over the years and those moments are touched upon throughout the book. As in-depth and informative as the book is, for me the special moments come from the direct quotes from Kjeld. His love of the LEGO brand and its fanbase shines through. He may be a businessman but above that, he’s basically an AFOL or as he puts it, one of us ‘older children’. It’s as much his story as it is that of the LEGO Group. Along with his insight, the book is full of interesting photographs, giving an extra connection to the company’s past endeavours and early days. The LEGO community has changed a lot and whilst there are those who like to mock the company or complain about the silliest of things, this book is a nice reminder as to why I and many others still find solace in a highly sophisticated interlocking brick system.

This book was originally published in Denmark as Et liv med LEGO by Danish author Jens Andersen with this new edition translated by Caroline Waight. The LEGO Story is available now from Amazon and other book retailers.

I’ve read many LEGO books and a fair few similar titles detailing the history of companies and this is by far the most interesting and in-depth book of its kind. Even the most ardent LEGO fans will learn something new from this wonderful book. The insights given by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and others throughout the book really add so much more to the other information found within it. The LEGO Story is a genuinely captivating read and after reading the book you’ll appreciate those little plastic bricks so much more. The only downside is the cost, its UK RRP is £25 but you can get a digital version at a lower price point. If you can afford the physical version, you’ll certainly get your money’s worth.

This book was provided to BricksFanz.com by HarperCollins for purposes of review. The thoughts within this review are that of BricksFanz.com and do not reflect those of the LEGO Group or HarperCollins. Providing products for free does not guarantee a favourable opinion of them.

By clicking on affiliate links within this article,  bricksfanz.com  may earn a small commission. this in no way influences our opinions or shapes the content we cover..

Author: Adam White

Howdy I'm Adam, The editor of BricksFanz.com - your go to source for the latest LEGO news, reviews and much, much more. Some of you may know me from other LEGO sites so you'll know I have a good experience of the LEGO community and a deep, passionate commitment to all things LEGO. I specialize in seeking out the latest LEGO news and products, as well as being an expert on all things LEGO gaming. So welcome to BricksFanz - Fuelling Your LEGO Lifestyle.

16th December 2022

I purchased this book and I’ve not yet had time to read that much. Like yourself, if I’m interested in a subject then I like to gain that insider knowledge which will, hopefully, give me that extra, additional insight into what makes that subject tick etc.,

From the tiny bit I’ve read I’m looking forward to gaining the skinny direct from the lips of Kjeld. I want to understand what it is that has taken an insignificant maker of wooden toys to become the number one toy manufacturer in the world.

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The LEGO Story

How a little toy sparked the world's imagination.

by Jens Andersen

• On Sale: 11/15/2022

Price: $32.50

Hardcover Digital Audiobook Unabridged EPUB

Format: Hardcover Digital Audiobook Unabridged EPUB

• Book Overview
• Author Info

About the Book

“Absolutely essential reading for every LEGO fan.” — Blocks

The definitive history of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family who still owns the company

"This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand." —Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.

This book tells the extraordinary story of a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child. The LEGO Story is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play, The LEGO Story also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand. 

An International Bestseller

Critical Praise

“This compelling cultural history of the Danish company that revolutionized toys for children and adults draws from the author’s unique access to Lego’s archives and interviews with its former president.” — New York Times Book Review

“ The LEGO Story  is absolutely essential reading for every LEGO fan. If you know nothing about the company and founding family’s history, then this is the perfect starting point. If you already know a lot of it, then this is packed with new information that you haven’t heard before. Whatever you do though, make sure you finish any urgent build projects before you start reading – this pacey, enjoyable book is really hard to put down.” — Blocks

"This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand." — Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

"How did stackable plastic blocks made by a Danish toy company become as ubiquitous in America as Tylenol and Kleenex?  The Lego Story  starts with the Christiansen family’s Great Depression–era decision to switch from carpentry to toys in order to stay afloat and brings us to the present." — Vulture, "6 Books You Should Read This Month"

"LEGO owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen spills all in [this] authorized biography. ... Charting 90 years of LEGO history, complete with archival photographs, The LEGO Story goes beyond the life and times of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to detail how his grandfather Ole Kirk first started the LEGO Group in 1932. Along the way, Andersen recounts how the Kristiansen family transformed the company from a small carpentry business into a world-leading toy manufacturer." — Brick Fanatics  

“A welcome gift for the LEGO lover in the family and a revealing work of business history.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Charming. … Andersen does a great job showing the company’s lasting power through 90 years of change, and the archival photos are a treat. This will delight business history buffs.”  — Publishers Weekly

“Those interested in LEGO history will find this book comprehensive and will enjoy interviews, photos, and the evolution of a toy legend.” — Booklist

"In this extraordinary inside look at LEGO, Jens Andersen tells the fascinating story of how a Danish family transformed a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials. ... The LEGO Story  is a richly illustrated, inside look into how innovation and creativity helped redefine the meaning of play – and established LEGO as one of the world’s most beloved brands." — J.P. Morgan NextList citation

Product Details

• ISBN: 9780063258020
• ISBN 10: 0063258021
• Imprint: Mariner Books
• Trimsize: 6.000 in (w) x 9.000 in (h) x 0.960 in (d)
• List Price: $32.50
• BISAC1 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business
• BISAC2 : SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture
• BISAC3 : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / International / General
• BISAC4 : ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES / Toys
• BISAC5 : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Entertainment

Jens Andersen

Jens Andersen  is an award-winning Danish author and literary critic whose works include acclaimed biographies of Hans Christian Andersen and Astrid Lindgren. He has a Ph.D. in Nordic Literature from Copenhagen University. Jens lives in Denmark and writes for several Danish newspapers.

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination

About this ebook.

The definitive history of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family who still owns the company

"This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand." —Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.

This book tells the extraordinary story of a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child. The LEGO Story is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play, The LEGO Story also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand. 

An International Bestseller

About the author

Jens Andersen is an award-winning Danish author and literary critic whose works include acclaimed biographies of Hans Christian Andersen and Astrid Lindgren. He has a Ph.D. in Nordic Literature from Copenhagen University. Jens lives in Denmark and writes for several Danish newspapers.

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Book Review: "The LEGO Story"

Nick Schenkel reviews “The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination", a history of the Kristiansen family’s building of the iconic toy brand by Jens Andersen.

The LEGO Story

by Heidi K. Rojek | Dec 9, 2022 | 2022 Gift Guide , For the Big Kid , For the History Buff

The extraordinary inside story of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family that still owns the company

“This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand.” —Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.

This book tells the extraordinary story of a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child.  The LEGO Story  is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play,  The LEGO Story  also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand. 

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“Absolutely essential reading for every LEGO fan.” —Blocks

The definitive history of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family who still owns the company

"This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand." —Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the LEGO Group and 3rd generation owner

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.

This book tells the extraordinary story of a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children’s right to play—and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child. The LEGO Story is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play, The LEGO Story also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand. 

An International Bestseller

Goodreads reviews for The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination

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The Lego Story

Published on March 04, 2023

Reviewed by Marybeth Ginsberg

While an offering of two bottles of cider would be the prize awarded to the person who could come up with a new name for Ole Kirk Christiansen’s Woodwork & Toy Factory in 1935, it was the founder himself who suggested LEGO as a company name. LEGO comes from the Danish words leg godt , meaning “play well.” Years of hard work and dedication would later make LEGO a household name for parents and children around the world. 

Early on, Ole Kirk Christiansen’s toy company struggled. However, in the summer of 1936, Ole Kirk’s toys were admired at a trade fair in Fredericia attended by King Christian X of Denmark. However, later in 1952, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, Ole Kirk’s son, recognized the need for the Lego company to focus on specialization. While short-lived hits like the yoyo, the Peace Pistol, and the Ferguson tractor had made the Lego company competitive, it was the expansion of Lego into other markets, most notably the German toy market, that relied on a single idea, or in this case, a single plastic brick that could be developed into a wider range of toys. However, without Ole Kirk’s legacy as a carpenter who built toys out of wood, a single plastic brick never could not have revolutionized the toy industry. 

Just weeks after the invention of the modern Lego brick, in 1958, Ole Kirk died. After initial disagreement over the management of the company business among his four sons, however, the company would enjoy a period of growth. Billund, Denmark, the home of Ole Kirk’s Woodworking & Carpentry Shop, would eventually become headquarters for Lego. While the company sought help from outside management, in time, grandson Kjeld would take the helm and lead Lego to its present day success.

Filled with family and commercial photos, as well as anecdotes, The Lego Story follows the Kirk Kristiansen family, who has for ninety years “defended children’s right to play. Despite decades of prosperous breakthroughs and difficult setbacks, the LEGO company remains strong today. If you enjoy stories about entrepreneurship, business expansion, family-centered business, and history, then you will enjoy reading T he LEGO Story.  If you are a self-professed "Lego maniac" and have been delighted by the famous brick for some time, then you will especially enjoy reading this book.

Author Jens Andersen is an award-winning Danish author and literary critic who lives in Denmark. 

Star Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Emily Henry does it again. Romantic 'Funny Story' satisfies without tripping over tropes

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The weather is getting warmer, so obviously it's time for another banger read from Emily Henry.

For a subset of millennial women, the author has become a summer staple . Freewheeling romances that defy the stereotypes of "beach reads" (starting with her 2020 debut cheekily titled, "Beach Read"), Henry has become a reliable source of yearly can't-put-them-down stories about love, friendships and getting older.

Her latest, " Funny Story " (available now from Berkley Hardcover, pp. 410) takes the traditional "opposites attract" narrative and gives a realistic, if somewhat tragic twist. Children’s librarian Daphne Vincent (Henry’s characters always love to read) has moved to a idyllic Lake Michigan beach town with her fiancé Peter, slotting herself into his preferred life and the house he bought.

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But when Peter leaves her for his childhood best friend just weeks before their wedding, Daphne doesn’t have a place to live. She winds up bunking with Miles, the ex-boyfriend of Peter’s new love. He's a punky, fun-loving charmer who everybody loves, and she's bookish and reserved. They don’t have anything in common except their shared heartbreak, but isn’t that just the perfect setting for new romance? 

It certainly checks a lot of rom-com set up boxes, but Henry wisely keeps Daphne’s journey far from perfect. There is real grief and trauma here, plus a loss of self and identity. Before Daphne can even think about falling in love with Miles, she has to start loving and knowing herself again. Maybe that’s not the stuff of traditional beach fluff, but for so many women who have been lost in romance in an unhealthy way, it’s deeply cathartic. And once the time for romance is right, Henry doesn't disappoint. It's sweet, passionate, and just hot enough to steam up the book, if not set it on fire.

Just like in her other novels, the author's characters are deep, realistic and relatable. Daphne is quiet and guarded, having grown up with an absentee father she has no faith in anyone to live up to her expectations. Gregarious Miles has more issues than meet the eye, and unfolding his inner life takes the reader on an unexpected journey as he and Daphne become friends, and something more.

Henry is so particularly talented at creating romance that eschews tropes and clichés but still satisfies our innate desire for predictability and happy endings in this genre. It's certainly not easy to balance the comfortingly formulaic with the tantalizingly unique. " Story " might hit the mark best of all of Henry's books so far.

It's a funny story, how she does it, actually. You should take a read.

That Time Europe Tried to Bring Monarchy Back to Mexico

In “Habsburgs on the Rio Grande,” Raymond Jonas’s story of French-backed nation building in Mexico foreshadows the proxy battles of the Cold War.

At the height of the American Civil War, the Hapsburg prince Maximilian went to Mexico to rule as king with the best of intentions. Credit... Dea Picture Library via Getty Images

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By Natasha Wheatley

Natasha Wheatley is a historian at Princeton University and the author of “The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty.”

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HABSBURGS ON THE RIO GRANDE: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire, by Raymond Jonas

In October 1863, a Mexican delegation arrived in Trieste, a polyglot city in southern Europe on the borderlands of the Hapsburg Empire. In a turreted castle on the Adriatic coast, the delegates — many of them Europhile bankers and industrialists — offered the crown of Mexico to Maximilian, a Hapsburg prince, and his wife, Charlotte, daughter of the king of Belgium.

Since gaining independence in 1821, Mexico had squandered the “splendid legacy” of European rule, the delegates explained, and the country now led a “sad existence” as a shaky, vulnerable republic. Only the resurrection of monarchy could guarantee stability and prosperity. The timing was crucial. Mexico’s republican neighbor, the United States, was too preoccupied by a civil war to block European intervention.

Maximilian thought of himself as a progressive monarch; he would accept the invitation only if it represented the true will of the Mexican people. When the delegates returned the following April, they brought enthusiastic testimonials from towns and villages across Mexico. Satisfied, flattered and ambitious, Maximilian and Charlotte set sail for North America as the emperor and empress of Mexico.

Two years later, a shattered Charlotte was back in Europe, eating nothing but fruit she peeled and nuts she shelled herself for fear of poisoning. Maximilian would soon be dead, executed by Mexico’s republican forces on a rocky hillside outside Querétaro.

The rise and fall of the Second Mexican Empire is the subject of “Habsburgs on the Rio Grande,” by the historian Raymond Jonas. Seen from the American perspective, Maximilian’s fleeting rule is all too easily understood as a European fantasy that failed to grasp history’s ineluctable path from monarchy to democracy. Jonas instead argues for its global significance, placing it at the center of a transcontinental power struggle between an expansionist United States and faltering European supremacy.

When Mexico first cast off Spanish rule, the country established its own independent monarchy — the First Mexican Empire — and then, in 1824, a republic. Two decades of turbulent constitutional change and civil strife followed. In 1845, the United States annexed Texas from Mexico. It then launched a war of aggression that would strip Mexico of half of its territory. U.S. ambitions appeared unlimited, its appetite for territory insatiable, and many Mexicans feared their young republic would succumb entirely.

They were not alone in their alarm. Across the Atlantic, as Mexico ceded California to end its war with the United States, European autocrats were busy stamping out liberal revolutions, many of which had drawn up constitutions inspired by the American one.

But it wasn’t just the existence of a stubbornly persistent democracy that made the United States a threat: European rulers watched aghast as the former English colony assumed colossal new proportions, stretching from coast to coast and dwarfing their own states in size. “In the space of two generations,” Jonas writes, “the American republic had transformed itself from a postcolonial backwater — distant and easily ignored — into an insolent continental powerhouse and an existential threat to Europe and European hegemony.”

They needed a strategy of containment. When the Civil War erupted, absorbing American energy and attention, European rulers, led by the French autocrat Napoleon III, seized the opportunity to check the rising hegemon. They joined forces with conservatives and traditionalists chafing at republican rule in Mexico to launch a wildly ambitious plan to restore monarchy and defend Mexico against the “Yankee imperialism” of the “Robber Republic” to the north.

On the pretext of collecting debt and protecting “persons and property,” British, Spanish and French forces formed a coalition of the willing and invaded Mexico in 1861. Cracks emerged quickly in this motley alliance. Facing military defeats, yellow fever and skeptical opinion at home, Britain and Spain soon fell away, leaving Napoleon III to wage his increasingly bloody “war of liberation” alone.

Napoleon claimed that he was not seeking a new French colony. He even paid lip service to the idea that the Mexican people should determine the type of regime to come — the main thing was that it be friendly to France and strong enough to resist U.S. power.

Yet he also conveniently subscribed to the unsupported view that Mexicans craved a monarch, and was all too happy when Mexican conservatives selected a Hapsburg prince to rule the new government his war had made possible. With Maximilian’s arrival, Napoleon’s project of regime change appeared complete.

Jonas vividly reconstructs how Maximilian’s power was forged and maintained by the sharp end of a French bayonet. It took the “largest transoceanic deployment of its time” — more than 30,000 soldiers were shipped from Europe and North Africa in the space of nine months — and even then the bitter fighting progressed street by street, house by house. Republican guerrilla resistance forces never surrendered.

The irony of an imperial intervention to defend against empire is not lost on Jonas, but, with a historian’s open-ended curiosity, he also wants to understand how the ideology of “liberatory” empire worked. If many invoked it opportunistically, others clearly did so with complete sincerity — including Maximilian, who saw his monarchy as a bulwark of Mexican independence against U.S. encroachment.

Maximilian learned Spanish before departing Europe and took his role seriously, becoming a champion of the majority Indigenous population and refusing to undo the popular nationalization of church property enacted by his republican predecessors, to the fateful dismay of the conservatives who propped up his rule.

He also saw American slavery as “hideous,” but, desperate for allies, he courted Confederate settlers, presenting Mexico as a refuge following their defeat in the American Civil War and drafting a peonage law that allowed them to bring their enslaved laborers to Mexico even though slavery had been abolished there following independence.

Jonas is astute and judicious in navigating the kaleidoscope of contradictory political ideologies that came together in the Second Mexican Empire, before all too quickly coming apart again. Captured by the republican forces of Benito Juárez as French troops withdrew, 34-year-old Maximilian was marched before a firing squad in June 1867. “I am going to die for a just cause, the independence and liberty of Mexico. May my blood end the misfortunes of my new country! Viva Mexico!” he declared, before parting his long blond beard over his shoulders to give the executioners a straight shot at his chest.

Maximilian was far from the last imperial leader to call himself a liberator. The 20th century belonged to two great anti-imperial empires — the United States and the Soviet Union — both of whom espoused self-determination even as they intervened far beyond their borders. The war on terror, with its naked pursuit of regime change abroad, also casts a long shadow over Jonas’s narration. Anti-imperialism, moreover, has remained a popular catch cry, and not just on the left, as Viktor Orban , in Hungary, and Narendra Modi , in India, remind us today.

In the end, Maximilian’s story captures a political world in dramatic transition, as traditional institutions — monarchy chief among them — reckoned with doctrines of popular sovereignty. For all his enlightened modernity, Maximilian still believed in the magical shield of his blue blood, a magic that was fitfully losing its force. Imprisoned and awaiting trial in Querétaro, he reportedly remarked to his general, “Don’t think that an Austrian archduke can be shot so easily.”

HABSBURGS ON THE RIO GRANDE : The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire | By Raymond Jonas | Harvard University Press | 369 pp. | $35

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Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, “Knife,” addresses the attack that maimed him  in 2022, and pays tribute to his wife who saw him through .

Recent books by Allen Bratton, Daniel Lefferts and Garrard Conley depict gay Christian characters not usually seen in queer literature.

What can fiction tell us about the apocalypse? The writer Ayana Mathis finds unexpected hope in novels of crisis by Ling Ma, Jenny Offill and Jesmyn Ward .

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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A gripping account of Captain Cook’s final voyage

‘the wide wide sea,’ by hampton sides, recounts cook’s search for the northwest passage.

I’m grateful to the Santa Fe bookseller who put Hampton Sides’s “Blood and Thunder” into my hands some years ago. With Kit Carson’s death-defying exploits at its center, the book revolutionized my concept of America’s westward expansion. Sides’s latest effort, “ The Wide Wide Sea ,” is a gripping account of Captain James Cook’s final voyage.

Cook is a controversial historical figure, especially in light of increasing consciousness about the evils of colonialism. Yet he continues to evoke curiosity and attention. As recently as last month, Popular Mechanics published an article about the rediscovery of his curated shell collection.

Sides does not skirt the rapacious appetites of the British and other European monarchies. The magic of this book, however, is in the details of the explorer’s life at sea. Sides relies on Cook’s writings as well those of other sailors on the voyage. Based on the selected bibliography he includes, Sides’s research was voluminous.

Cook had made two world voyages by the time the book opens. He was a celebrity, having “risen from virtually nothing.” At sea, he’d bucked the Royal Navy’s tradition of violence and cruelty. He’d figured out how to avoid scurvy and brought home information of incomparable value, had mastered new nautical instruments and served as an expert scientist, anthropologist and navigator. His mapmaking skills were superlative.

After only six months at home, he took off again, in search of the elusive Northwest Passage . His third expedition consisted of 180 people in two wooden ships, the Resolution and the Discovery. They left England in July 1776.

In addition to Cook’s story, other narratives weave through the book. One particularly fascinating account is that of Mai, a native of Raiatea, a volcanic island 130 miles northwest of present-day Tahiti. When Mai was a boy, warriors from Bora Bora invaded Raiatea, murdered his father, seized his family’s land and enslaved much of the population, forcing his family to take refuge in Tahiti. In 1767, a teenage Mai witnessed the English navy’s firepower when Samuel Wallis, a British navigator, arrived in the HMS Dolphin and fought the Tahitians. Vowing to avenge his people against Bora Bora, Mai concluded that English guns were the way to go. When Cook sailed in seven years later on his second Pacific voyage, Mai requested passage, becoming the first Polynesian to set foot on English soil.

Mai’s story reads as metaphor for colonialism. He learned English and was wined and dined as a celebrity. Although horrified by London’s grinding poverty, unthinkable in his homeland, he wore the local dress and adopted the manners of a foppish English gentleman. He met King George, who provided Mai and Cook with a large assortment of farm animals and domesticated birds, to cement the king’s footprint around the globe. No surprise — the animals were hell to care for. Mai had been in search of heavy artillery from King George, but for the voyage was given only an “arsenal of muskets [and] broadswords,” as well as gifts that would have been unimaginable to the Polynesians — cut-glass bows, laced hats, crockery and telescopes. If not the cache Mai hoped for, it does reflect the English royalty’s strategy for winning friends.

It isn’t possible in this short space to describe Sides’s hair-raising accounts of the journey, an itinerary that led from England to present-day South Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Hawaii, north to Alaska and beyond, and back to Hawaii. Just repairing and re-provisioning the ship required herculean efforts. The physical threats included days-long ocean storms, fog so thick it wasn’t possible to see from stern to bow and cold temperatures against which no garment could protect.

By the time Cook reached Polynesia in October 1777, the rat infestation was so great that “the vermin had all but taken over the holds, gangways, and lower decks.” At Moorea, 12 miles from Tahiti, Cook created a “swinging bridge” from ropes to lure the rats on land. A few made it to the beaches, introducing Polynesia to the European black rats, which remain a “scourge” today.

Cook understood that his men were vectors for infection. An ascetic, he occasionally stopped his men from going ashore to prevent the spread of venereal disease. At times he restrained his crew from violence; at other times, his temper was uncontrollable. After a series of petty thefts from the ship by Tongo natives, Cook ordered brutal floggings and had a villager’s ears cut off. In punishment for one Moorea person stealing a goat, Cook had the village and its cropland torched, along with its canoes. Sides suggests that over the course of this final voyage, Cook may have been suffering declining mental faculties.

By August 1778, the two ships were in the Arctic Ocean sailing toward Siberia. Cook was careful, “zagging outward if the pincers of ice began to close in on his vessels.” When he finally concluded there was no Northwest Passage, he decided to salvage his “defeat,” by doing “reconnaissance work in Hawai’i.” A man onboard wrote, “Those who have been amongst ice, in the dread of being enclosed in it, and in so late a season, can be the best judge of the general joy this news gave.”

People tend to know Cook was killed by native people in Hawaii. The events leading up to his death are gruesome and upsetting, including “cannibalism” made more explicable in Sides’s measured account.

This book captures a time when Europeans were finding unfathomable new worlds. Armed with extensive research and terrific writing, Sides re-creates the newness of the experience, the vast differences in and among Indigenous cultures, and natural phenomena that were as terrifying as they were wondrous.

Martha Anne Toll’s prizewinning debut novel, “Three Muses,” was published in 2022. Her second novel, “Duet for One,” is forthcoming in early 2025.

The Wide Wide Sea

Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

By Hampton Sides

Doubleday. 432 pp. $35

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

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Picture This

George takei 'lost freedom' some 80 years ago – now he's written that story for kids.

Samantha Balaban

George Takei was just 4 years old when when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066:

"I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders... to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded..."

It was Feb. 19, 1942. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor two months earlier; For looking like the enemy, Japanese and Japanese American people in the U.S. were now considered "enemy combatants" and the executive order authorized the government to forcibly remove approximately 125,000 people from their homes and relocate them to prison camps around the country.

Book Reviews

George takei recalls time in an american internment camp in 'they called us enemy'.

Star Trek actor George Takei has written about this time in his life before — once in an autobiography, then in a graphic memoir, and now in his new children's book, My Lost Freedom.

It's about the years he and his mom, dad, brother and baby sister spent in a string of prison camps: swampy Camp Rohwer in Arkansas, desolate Tule Lake in northern California. But first, they were taken from their home, driven to the Santa Anita racetrack and forced to live in horse stalls while the camps were being built.

"The horse stalls were pungent," Takei remembers, "overwhelming with the stench of horse manure. The air was full of flies, buzzing. My mother, I remember, kept mumbling 'So humiliating. So humiliating.'"

He says, "Michelle's drawing really captured the degradation our family was reduced to."

Michelle is Michelle Lee, the illustrator — and researcher — for the book. Lee relied heavily on Takei's text and his excellent memory, but it was the research that both agree really brought the art to life.

"I'm telling it from the perspective of a senior citizen," Takei, 87, laughs. "I really had to wring my brains to try to remember some of the details."

So Takei took Lee to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where he is a member of the board. They had lunch in Little Tokyo, got to know each other, met with the educational director, and looked at the exhibits. Then Lee started digging into the archives.

Movie Interviews

From 'star trek' to lgbt spokesman, what it takes 'to be takei'.

"I looked for primary sources that showed what life was like because I feel like that humanizes it a lot more," Lee explains. She found some color photographs taken by Bill Manbo, who had smuggled his camera into the internment camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. "While I was painting the book, I tried as much to depict George and his family just going about their lives under these really difficult circumstances."

Takei says he was impressed with how Lee managed to capture his parents: his father, the reluctant leader and his mother, a fashion icon in her hats and furs. "This has been the first time that I've had to depict real people," Lee adds.

To get a feel for 1940s fashion, Lee says she looked at old Sears catalogues. "What are people wearing? All the men are wearing suits. What kind of colors were clothes back then."

But a lot of information has also been lost — Lee wasn't able to see, for example, where Takei and his family lived in Arkansas because the barracks at Camp Rohwer have been torn down — there's a museum there now. "I didn't actually come across too many photos of the interior of the barracks," says Lee. "The ones I did come across were very staged."

She did, however, find the original floor plans for the barracks at Jerome Camp, also in Arkansas. "I actually printed the floorplan out and then built up a little model just to see what the space was actually like," Lee says. "I think it just emphasized how small of a space this is that whole families were crammed into."

One illustration in the book shows the work that Takei's mother put in to make that barrack — no more than tar paper and boards stuck together — a home.

"She gathered rags and tore them up into strips and braided them into rugs so that we would be stepping on something warm," Takei remembers. She found army surplus fabrics and sewed curtains for the windows. She took plant branches that had fallen off the nearby trees and made decorative sculptures. She asked a friendly neighbor to build a table and chairs.

"You drew the home that my mother made out of that raw space, Takei tells Lee. "That was wonderful."

Michelle Lee painted the art for My Lost Freedom using watercolor, gouache and colored pencils. Most of the illustrations have a very warm palette, but ever-present are the barbed wire fences and the guard towers. "There's a lot of fencing and bars," Lee explains. "That was kind of the motif that I was using throughout the book... A lot of vertical and horizontal patterns to kind of emphasize just how overbearing it was."

Takei says one of his favorite drawings in the book is a scene of him and his brother, Henry, playing by a culvert.

Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2022

George takei got reparations. he says they 'strengthen the integrity of america'.

"Camp Rohwer was a strange and magical place," Takei writes. "We'd never seen trees rising out of murky waters or such colorful butterflies. Our block was surrounded by a drainage ditch, home to tiny, wiggly black fishies. I scooped them up into a jar.

One morning they had funny bumps. Then they lost their tails and their legs popped out. They turned into frogs!"

"They're just two children among many children who were imprisoned at these camps," says Lee, "and to them, perhaps, aspects of being there were just fun." The illustration depicts both childlike wonder and — still, always — a sense of foreboding. Butterflies fly around a barbed wire fence. A bright sun shines on large, dark swamp trees. Kids play in the shadow of a guard tower.

"There's so much that you tell in that one picture," says Takei. "That's the art."

"So many of your memories are of how perceptive you are to things that are going on around you," adds Lee, "but also still approaching things from a child's perspective."

Even though the events in My Lost Freedom took place more than 80 years ago, illustrator Michelle Lee and author George Takei say the story is still very relevant today.

"These themes of displacement and uprooting of communities from one place to another — these are things that are constantly happening," says Lee. Because of war and because of political decisions ... those themes aren't uncommon. They're universal."

Takei agrees. "People need to know the lessons and learn that lesson and apply it to hard times today. And we hope that a lot of people get the book and read it to their children or read it to other children and act on it."

He's done his job, he says, now the readers have their job.

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