The Book cover art

The Book

A Cover-To-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time

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About this listen

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. The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity's most important-and universal-information technology.

©2016 Keith Houston (P)2019 Tantor Crafts & Hobbies History History & Culture Literary History & Criticism World Technology

Critic reviews

“Erudite, playful, and illuminating . . . Houston is both witty and intensely detailed . . . A splendid, challenging mixture of information and fun.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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This book has lots of interesting information about the various inventions and inventors that have helped us have the modern book (and all the historic books, scrolls etc too). If you like books on the history of the invention of the telegraph, the computer etc you'll like this. Sensible arrangement of contents by theme (broadly: writing surface, lettering, illustrations, binding) without too much reptation given that several periods of time reappear in more than one section. Let down a little by some idiosyncratic decisions from the narrator. For example, making Herodotus sound like some species of dinosaur (Hero-DOE-tus) and also I still don't know why he kept saying 'Drop Cap'. But well worth listening to in spite of this.

A good book on technological development of books

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Having expected and longed for a fascinating and thrilling history of how storage and transport of information with increasing speed and convenience radically transformed the world beyond all recognition before the Internet was even conceived, I couldn't possibly have been more disappointed. But if you're genuinely that interested in the history of the technology of books from the development of papyrus, parchment and paper to the printing press and different bindings, then it's good that you're spending some time away from your stamp collection and model train set.

The History Of Paint & Watching It Dry

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