The Book – A Review

The Finding of The Book

While perusing my favorite section of Half-Price Books a while back, “Writings About Writings”, a bright red book spine with equally bright white lettering caught my eye. The Book, it declared in large font, its title so simple and succinct that I laughed and pulled it out just to see why. Cue the subtitle: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time. 

Not so simple anymore. I opened to the introduction and met four words blazing up at me in extra-large print, announcing, “This is a BOOK”.

Well, duh.

But then I read the next few lines. In short order, I knew that I needed The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time in all its extended-subtitle glory.

So I bought it, brought it home, and proceeded to enrapture my two children — both younger than 15 — with my dramatic reading of the hilarious, fascinating, and word-luscious introduction in full. 

My children begged me to read on, but instead I settled down selfishly by myself to read and learn, and to continue to laugh at and be amazed by the facts and fancies that have dogged the book-making industry since its prehistoric beginnings along the reedy shores of the Nile.

The Writing in The Book

The Book, written by Keith Houston, doesn’t just discuss those rectangular objects we hold daily in our hands or stare at wistfully from our busy lives as they sit untouched on our bookshelves.

It also delves deep into the history, legend, lies, and truths of the written word, creating from all of that an astonishingly gripping tale of facts interspersed with intrigue and unsolved riddles. 

The Book is as much a history lesson as it is a mystery, revealing more than it conceals, but always leaving a few things a little unraveled for our imagination to wonder at — for so history itself, with its often patchy evidence, demands. 

Did war and incidental captives truly bring Chinese paper-making to Africa? Who created the first “real” book? What inspired Gutenberg’s ambitions? Some questions have answers, while some remain stubbornly silent, but The Book provides the well-researched fodder to enable any reader to imagine it out, or to continue the hunt for themselves.

The Visuals of The Book

The Book also contains a number of fascinating visuals, some of which are more instructional than others, but all of which are fully accessible to the average reader. 

Firstly and most obviously are the bracket labels. These grace the cover and the first few pages in particular, calling out by name all the parts and pieces of a modern book — the dingbats, recto running heads, captions, folios, and all the rest — so that a reader can, if they wish, immerse themselves in the current terminology of the industry. 

Then there are the full-color images, some of which fill an entire page. These display real articles, ancient texts, patent diagrams, original woodcuts, and more. With one’s newfound knowledge of how such things are or were created, these images take on a fuller, deeper meaning.

The More of The Book

Finally, for the truly geeky, The Book offers a mouthwatering three-page list of “some of the best” other books that discuss the history of books, as well as a 66-page bibliography, a colophon detailing the precise factory production of each copy of The Book, and a full and detailed index. 

It’s a scratch on the surface of the overall history of books, but it’s a deep scratch, and offered in a manner and voice that never for a second reads like a dry history tome. When a book of any sort can make you laugh repeatedly, keeps you up reading far later into the night than you intended, and demands that you tell the world about it, you know you’ve found a keeper! 

Written in 2016, The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time can readily be found for purchase at most book retailers, and is available in both audio and book format. You might also get lucky like me and find it in a second-hand shop — though I weep for the individual who so readily gives up such a prize. 

But one way or another, grab yourself a copy and settle down to be amazed, entertained, and ultimately better informed by this truly most powerful object.

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