The Book on the Bookshelf

From the author of the highly praised The Pencil and The Evolution of Useful Things comes another captivating history of the seemingly mundane: the book and its storage.

Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didn’t. As a result, readers are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress.

Petroski takes us into the pre-Gutenberg world, when books were so scarce they were chained to lecterns for security. He explains how the printing press not only changed the way books were made and shelved but also increased their availability and transformed book readers into book owners and collectors.

In delightful digressions, Petroski lets Seneca have his say on “the evils of book collecting;” examines the famed collection of Samuel Pepys and his only three thousand titles—old discarded to make room for new; and discusses bookselling, book buying, and book collecting through the centuries.

This is the ultimate book on the book: how it came to be and how we have come to keep it.