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A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time
by Keith Houston
"Everybody who has ever read a book will benefit from the way Keith Houston explores the most powerful object of our time. And everybody who has read it will agree that reports of the book's death have been greatly exaggerated." - Erik Spiekermann, typographer
We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages - of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity, and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. Sure to delight book lovers of all stripes with its lush, full-color illustrations, The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity's most important - and universal - information technology.
"Starred Review. A splendid, challenging mixture of information and fun." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Houston's fixation with this object is a delight, and his understanding of how history is written and his clear delineation between speculation and established fact are very refreshing." - Publishers Weekly
"This engaging volume should satisfy a wide cross-section of book lovers, history buffs, and those interested in the dynamic relationship among language, the written word, and human ingenuity." - Library Journal
This information about The Book was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Keith Houston is the author of Shady Characters and the founder of shadycharacters.co.uk. He lives in London.
If you liked The Book, try these:
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A history of one of humankind's most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium—the book.
by Elaine Castillo
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An exploration and polemic that redefines the power and potential for reading by a novelist whose "prose is as good as it gets" (NPR) and who has "a real voice: vernacular and fluid, with a take-no-prisoners edge" (Kirkus).
by Nicholas A.. Basbanes
Published 2014
A consideration of all things paper: Entertaining, illuminating, irresistible, a book that masterfully guides us through paper's inseparability from human culture.
There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.
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