I don’t know if folks still do it, but when Miatas first came along, some people dropped v8 engines into them (the nickname for those cars was “monster Miatas”)
The Mark Kurlansky books with food titles, like Cod, or Salt, or The Big Oyster are really interesting explorations of global trade history and cultural trends seen through the lens of key trade goods. All great reads.
Oh, and the Robert Hughes book, the Fatal Shore, is amazing (history of Australia’s colonization).