Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830

Rating:
Summary: In-Depth Look at Print Culture
Review: This book, with its detailed descriptions of catalouging techniques in the Bodelian and twenty pages of commentary on printers' errata sheets, should have been boring.

Happily, it wasn't.

The author has managed to make this book into a wonderfully coherent, in-depth, chronological exploration of how people over the centuries have read, used and abused books, and about changing understandings of what a book was and what it ought or ought not to do. I especially liked how the chapters on censorship showed the long history of this practice, as well as the long history of people who manage to read censored works anyway.

I thought that the final chapter on what books are today and what internet publishing may do to them in the future was a little skimpy, but it's generally a worthwhile read, and turned an obscure topic into something really interesting.