THE histories of the 20th century that are currently being written will deal with wars and politics and economic shifts: the big stuff over which most of us have no control. They won't tell us how the majority of ordinary Australians spent their time last century — what we read, watched, bought, laughed at and argued about.

There has always been this gap in history books, but it didn't matter so much in past centuries, because there was no such thing as Leisure Time or Mass Taste. Those notions are unique to the 20th century, and they are the subject matter of Things We Loved. A book such as this would not have been possible at the end of the 19th century, because back then, most people worked, ate, shopped, and amused themselves locally, and they neither knew nor cared how the people in the next town were working, eating, shopping or amusing themselves.

There was no shared culture, because the only method of spreading ideas was the printed word, and most people didn't have the skill or the time to read it.

Then came movies, recordings, radio, advertising, and television, enabling us to share everything — not just across this continent, but with the world. Australians built a culture by borrowing bits from any other culture that took our fancy. We became famous as "early adopters" of new ideas.

At the end of the 20th century, Australians were buying their favourite hot drink from the Swiss, their favourite ice block from the British, their favourite game machine from the Japanese, their favourite TV comedy from the Americans, and their favourite tampon from the Swedes. See pages 24, 132, 140, 291, and 296.

This book investigates 100 elements of the culture we have constructed, trying to explain how they started and why we loved them. To be eligible for inclusion here, a product, person, entertainment, or idea simply needed to have appealed to millions of Australians.

It didn't have to be born on this continent, and it didn't have to be of enduring quality. It just had to be popular. Inevitably, many of the things loved by millions of us originated overseas. By any numerical measure, Bugs Bunny is a more significant part of our history than Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and soy sauce is no less Australian than tomato.

If you're looking for a book of patriotic icons, this isn't it. (Vegemite only scraped in because my publisher vetoed my planned chapter on tiramisu, claiming it did not satisfy the test of being familiar to most Australians.) Nor is this a book about great artistic achievements.

The Simpsons got in and the novels of Patrick White stayed out, because not enough of us have read poor Patrick. For similar reasons, Bob Dylan gets a passing mention and Abba gets a whole chapter.

No doubt some of your favourite things didn't make it, along with some of my favourite things. But many favourites of most Australians did, either as chapter topics or references within chapters.

Millions of us bought Holdens during the 20th century, but I thought that story had been told often enough (for example, in my earlier book, The 100 Things Everyone Needs To Know About Australia). So I put in the Mars Bar instead.

The CD, which started replacing vinyl in 1985, also sold in the millions, but it was just another form of recording, while I thought the Walkman deserved a place because it was a leap into the unknown.

In fact, I have indulged in a fair bit of personal theorising here, which would never be permitted if Encyclopedia Britannica had undertaken this project.

I would like this book to be seen as a set of souvenirs — some embarrassing, some inspiring, but all reminding us of happy moments in our journey through The Century of the Short Attention Span. Amongst the wars, politics and economic shifts, the past 100 years have given us a ride worth remembering.