The Book

If you're interested in how books came to be book-shaped, this is for you. A readable and humorous, but academically referenced, tale of how we got the ink, printing, paper, covers, sizes, and shapes in the way books currently are produced.

This one was of particular interest to me as both a book nerd and a medievalist, and I was pleased to see the topics I was already familiar with covered in an accurate way - this bodes well for the rest of the story, always a concern when you've picked up a book in the popular and cheaply-priced end of the spectrum.

If you are going to pick this up, I definitely recommend getting a Dead Tree version, simply because the author so often refers to the object you're holding as a demonstration of the ideas he talks about.

And also it's very sexy.