People of the Book is almost pornography for bibliophiles. This book had me seriously considering going back to school to learn about document preservation.

I went through a period of wanting to read a lot of books about books about a year ago. I think I even have an old submission in r/books on the same subject. Here are a bunch of books I still have on my amazon wishlist that date to around that time. This will be a shotgun blast of suggestions, and some may be only tangentially related, but I figure more is better. If I can think of even more than this, I'll edit later:

The Man who Loved Books Too Much

Books that Changed the World

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

How to Read and Why

The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Classics for Pleasure

An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books

The Library at Night

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Time Was Soft There

I have even more around here somewhere...

Edit: Ok, found a couple more....

Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book-Hunter in the 21st Century

At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries

Candida Hofer

Libraries in the Ancient World

The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read

A Short History of the Printed Word

Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption

Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work

The Book on the Bookshelf

A History of Illuminated Manuscripts

Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production

Library: An Unquiet History

Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms

A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books

A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

And yet I still can't find the one I'm thinking of. Will get back to you...

Fuck yeah, I found it!

That last is more about the woman who own the store than about books, but it's awash in anecdotes about writers and stories we all know and love. Check it out.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

I think there is a difficulty in using the term "digital historian" or "digital humanities," because, like you suggest, it's unclear what that means. Does it in fact refer to a new field? Or, new tools to approach history? Or, as my post outlines, new outlets for historians to discuss their work? Or all three? "Digital historians" themselves have not agreed on a definition yet (at least as far as I've read), so in part the post was adding to that discussion by offering a new way of thinking about it. I see a lot of talk about the field and tools of a digital historian, and in a haphazard way, about "digital humanities" that seemingly encompasses whenever a liberal arts scholar touches on the "digital" in any way. It was partly written out of frustration as I don't see historians discussing the potential impact of "digital society" on the role and of our profession within that society. Instead we have concentrated on examining how it can change the tools we use to study of history, though to some, it does seem to imply a new field of history.

Despite your skepticism, I think the field of digital history is out there, but still being shaped into a coherent idea. At my home institution, the University of Waterloo, Ian Milligan is working on digital history projects. He's exploring how historians will look at society in the internet age and what tools they will have to do it. I know at University of Western Ontario, William Turkel is also doing digital history. I am sure there are others mirroring their work. Though the field is still being shaped by scholars like them, there is hints at a new field which examines the recent changes in our relation to and use of technology. Of course, I suppose this could just be explained as a new approach within the history of Information Society. I am not sure yet!

I am a bit hesitant about Big Data. From what I've read, there was a similar popularity about using computers back in the late 70s and early 80s to examine large amounts of data, and that did not result in a revolution in the field/profession. I don't think that's an area where we will see new, exciting ideas, but rather, as you suggest, old ones that have longer footnotes or more data backing them up. There are some directions that I find extremely interesting. Considering "video games" as sources of historical knowledge/memory and the methodology required to examine them; how society has conceived of information (though Information Society has had a journal since the 80s, it's stuff like Ann Blair's Too Much To Know that offers new ways of thinking about it); or methodology addressing how to use internet sources like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit and what they tell historians. I am a "contextual relativist" though, so I believe in reconstructing history as best as we can, so I am sure there are other ways of approaching digital history that I find less interesting to consider. There's a lot of room for methodological innovation and I am sure Big Data will cause some historiographical changes. I can't think of any big historiography change as a result of digital history, though I suspect we might see some soon enough.

What I think is most needed right now is a clarification and agreement about the terms we're using. Who knows if my post discusses "digital history," "digital humanities," or the "digital historian," or all of them. And who knows if "digital" means the same in each usage. I am trying to be a part of that discussion even if I am not yet giving clear answers. One day, perhaps! I really appreciate your comment, as this is exactly the sort of conversation we wanted to have through our blog.

How to Judge a Book Without Even Reading It

Do you think librarians read all those books they buy?? Heck no. Yes, collection development librarians rely heavily on library review journals, but you can pretty successfully judge a book before you even read the intro. And how!

1. Try a Little Intellectual Snobbery

Basically with this you need to try to smell out the people who are saying “I’m not a historian but…” when they start their books. Who wrote this thing and why? Is this a historian going for tenure, is this maybe a historian trying to write more popular history, is this a historian at the end of their life putting out a magnum opus, is this a journalist? Who published it, academic press or regular press? Does this person have Something to Prove with this history book?

Now, I’m a little leery of recommending this method first, because I’ve seen some pretty shitty books published by big academic houses from heavily degreed people, and I’ve seen some very nice historical work put out by tiny publishers you’ve never heard of or self-published, and written by people who just decided to write a book because they cared deeply about the history of something that few others cared about. Good work absolutely stands on its own merits, and independent scholars are important animals in the academic ecosystem. But there is a correlation here, and not necessarily a causation, between academics working with academic publishing houses and the production of rigorous history, and you can lean on it a little.

2. Give it the Vulcan Citations Pinch

Flip to the back of the book. Where does the actual book stop and the endmatter start? Basically the more endmatter the better. You want maybe a good solid half centimeter of paper between your fingers, preferably more. If you start seeing appendices in addition to citations and index that’s very good.

3. Scope-to-Cred Ratio

This one’s hard to quantify but basically, the more modest the book’s scope the more modest of arguments and credentials the author needs to pull it off. So a book about say the importance of paperback books for soldiers in WWII, this is a pretty modest scope, and it’s not making any very bold claims, there’s no real reason to be suspicious about the arguments made in this book, although it’s absolutely a popular history work. A book trying to explain the history of everything, get suspicious.

4. Read the Intro

Okay after the first three bits you’ve decided this book has merited your attention enough to open the thing. The intro to a book should give you the outline of the major argument and you can decide whether the argument passes a basic smell test of not being total bullshit. If you find the argument compelling and you want to see how they are going to argue it in the knitty gritty, it’s time to commit to checking out/buying the book and seeing what’s up. (Intros are usually available for new books on Google Books or Amazon previews.)

4b. Read the Acknowledgments

You can tell a lot about a person from their acknowledgments section. I’ve seen books where the author specifically thanked the ILL staff of their local library. They should ideally be thanking an archives or two if it’s a modern history book, because that means they’ve done Real Research.

5. Have a Good Idea of How One Does History

This one takes a little time investment, but having a basic idea of what makes a good historical argument and what makes a bad one will serve you well for judging any history book, from any topic. Maybe just spend some time on the logical fallacies section of Wikipedia. Just knowing to run away when you hear someone start yammering about glorious progress or indulging in extended hero-worship will serve you remarkably well in the history section at Barnes and Noble.

6. Nothing Wrong with Reading a Bad Book

Okay, so you did all this pre-judgement and you still managed to read a real turd. Ah well. You always can learn a lot from something done poorly. They’re a certain grim joy in hating a bad book, especially if you get to feel smarter than an author, so just treat yourself to a really firm critical dismissal of the work. Maybe leave a real stinker of a review here on a Saturday or /r/badhistory.

Yes, but you have to understand that it is very different from all of the more "modern" fantasies that have stolen from it. It is also very different from the movies. So it will be in many ways nothing like the fantasies you have read and liked. Tolkien was a scholar of ancient languages and legends. He could make up languages that were actually like real languages. In some ways LOTR is more like Beowulf than WOT or the like. LOTR is one of the world's great books. In a class with Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Goethe. A lot of people read scifi and fantasy because they don't read that stuff (me too, I'm not criticizing). So if you are going to say LOTR is too different from what I'm used to and I don't like it, then don't bother. But it is a great read if you can get into it.

I first read LOTR almost 50 years ago and it is impossible give you a sense of how different and strange it was. There was nothing like it before. Of course, every fantasy since has copied it in many ways. Even the LOTR movies are modern, a lot of special effects vaguely tied together by a plot that is less important than the special effects, and in that sense nothing at all like the books. But no later fantasy can copy the mythic structure, the languages, the peoples, all as rich as real.

Off on a tangent, and not a recommendation for the OP, the Real Middle Earth is a book LOTR (book, not movies) fans might want to read. It's about the middle ages, stuff we've all forgotten but Tolkien knew and loved.

Dating handwriting is a difficult thing, but, the important thing here is the presence of some characters from 'secretary' hand. (Look at the 'Secretarie Alphabete here http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/alphabets.html ). In general, you'll find secretary forms being used very commonly up to the 1630s or 40s, and less universally (but still often) in the later decades of the 17th Century. It would be very unusual to see it at all in the 18C. The main conclusion you can make is that the annotator was most likely roughly contemporary with the printing - getting more solid than that would be a chore. And I think a quill would at this point would be correct; wikipedia says fountain pens are starting to get used, but I still think it's most common to make your own quill and ink. (Check this out for more detail http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Writing-Implements-Age-Quill/dp/1872477003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383010783&sr=8-1&keywords=western+writing+implements ) .

Ah, so h e and r don't stand for anything - it's just that they are some of the letters that have a more distinctive 'secretary' style.

I think (and I might be wrong) that one of the reasons such books survive because the common quality of paper back then was just so much higher than it is now, at least in big print-runs. Whereas a modern paperback would go brittle and yellow in less than a decade, that just doesn't happen so quickly with early modern books.

The whole idea of renaissance annotation has been a big growth industry, (at least within academia!) in recent years. Here's a book on the subject that's genuinely interesting http://www.amazon.co.uk/Used-Books-Material-Texts-ebook/dp/B00DPBKJWK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383010543&sr=8-1&keywords=used+books+sherman .

It's pretty rare to see posts or queries on here that I'm equipped to answer with anything resembling specialist knowledge, so I guess it's just nice to have the opportunity to be useful! Rare books are kind of difficult to get a working knowledge of without prolonged exposure to them, and not everyone has had that opportunity.

A lot of interesting literature has been written on this topic. If you'd like a good read and want to know more about the romance formula and why we read them anyway, I'd recommend this awesome book. The structure of romance novels is indeed formulaic, though for some pretty fascinating reasons!

Nice reply. I really would stress the technical definition of capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, with the goal of profit), because it allows a lot of useful investigation. Still, i like your thinking that capitalism is about the weekends, and it got me curious.

I was taught in school that the two-day weekend was invented by Henry Ford, along with a whole raft of worker benefits, and that we have him to thank for every free Saturday. I found this Politifact article that lays out a more detailed picture, and suggests that Ford was simply responding to the pressure of a decades-long campaign by workers. Also, it points out that the now-standard work week (8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, Saturday and Sunday off) was not formalised in the US until 1940, well after Henry Ford’s time.
This suggests that we owe our weekends of luxury not necessarily to generous employers, but to the organised struggle of workers.

If we look further back in history, we might see that industrial capitalism has a history of very long work days, with very little holiday. I actually work on the grounds of a mansion in an old mill town. The employer and their family lived in the grand house, on top of a hill, with a view down to the river where the mills ran. The slope is terraced by small houses, built to house the mill workers, and which used to be slums. In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was very little legal protection, and the workers endured shifts up to 14 hours a day. Child labour was employed in some parts, and there are accounts of beds ‘never getting warm’ because, as soon as the father would get home, the mother would get up to work. Wages were generally very poor, and children would often suffer from malnutrition.

Some really good info on this:

Very good book

An overview of working conditions

It’s vitally important to note that the factories, the mills, the looms, were all privately owned, and operated for profit. It was in the interest of profit that wages were low and the work day was long. This powerful motive is still present today.

Romance novels have always been the most popular most popular and bestselling genre. Another popular romance writer, whose book was not so different from 50 shades, is getting an 8 figure advance for her next book. If you're interested in understanding the draw of romance novels, there is a very interesting text, though from the 1980s, still feels very true today.

So the question is not really "What is the draw of the 50 shades" series, it's "why did 50 shades become more popular than all of its peers"? Regardless, romance/erotica writers are making bank today, especially because they write very prolifically.

Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods is a very accessible introduction to thinking about literature in a way that blends narratology and semiotics. It generally sticks pretty closely to talking about the stories he has in mind, so I wished while reading it that I'd had a copy of Gérard de Nerval's Sylvie on hand, among others.

David Lodge's The Art of Fiction used to be popular as a supplementary textbook in creative writing classes because it just uses nice examples to provide a basic language for talking about literature.

John Sutherland has a number of books intended for a general audience that either introduce basic concepts of literary criticism or that just make careful reading fun, e.g. How Literature Works, A Little History of Literature, and The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction (an omnibus edition of the books he's probably most well known for).

Gaston Bachelard comes to mind as someone who, like Gass, is just a delight to read: The Poetics of Space, Air and Dreams, etc. I'd put some other writers writing about their personal relationships to reading in a similar category: Nicholson Baker, U and I; Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary; and even Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.

> You would be surprised how powerful an argument based on non-judgement is to a group of people whom have been brought up with the idea of "may he who is without sin cast the first stone".

You're such an ameteur. Jesus did not tell people not to judge.

> Your hedonism, which you so decry, does not seem to be having a notable effect on the human species other than to make weekends more enjoyable.

If you were to read this book, you would learn that the working-class of the 19th century were far more educated than those today. Hedonism and anti-intellectualism are bound tightly, like two rotten peas in a pod. I'm sure you've lamented the dreadful level of political discourse... Well, you indirectly support it.

Moreover, it is well known that people are generally less happy than they used to be, despite huge increases of personal wealth. Huh, I wonder why that is... Certainly nothing to do with the fact that we live in a spiritual wasteland.

> In those societies where the protestant ethic was not so brutally imposed on the populace and they have a far more balanced idea of hedonism - surprise surprise - they do not have this problem.

You don't appear to even understand what the Protestant Work Ethic is. A country with a Protestant Work Ethic would have no problems with hedonism; work itself would be pleasing.

The Long Walk was a work of fiction. I enjoyed the hell out of it when it was published, but since then there has been a lot of interested readers doing research.

Read "[Looking for Mr. Smith]
(http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Mr-Smith-Greatest-Survival/dp/1626365415/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1459265463&sr=8-8&keywords=looking+for+mr+smith)" by Linda Willis to gain insight into Rawicz's story and its true origin. After reading this book I've had to join the chorus of people who believe that Rawicz was actually somewhere else during the time of "the walk" and had cobbled together his tale from what he'd heard others talk about.

It's amazing to me that after all this time and after so many people analyzing the books word-for-word we are still finding things like this from books published years ago. I've read a lot of stuff and this is the first I've seen this. I kind of wish there was a version of the books where everything was annotated like a Shakespeare play or a companion guide like they have for Joyce novels like Finnegans Wake that makes note of every little thing. I know there are podcasts and blogs but how cool would a book like that be?

Best book for screenwriting IMO: John Yorke's 'Into The Woods'

And best book for writing (which gives valuable, but indirect lessons in screenwriting) IMO: Ayn Rand 'The Art of Fiction'

Hope this helps!

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Yale, 2010) is excellent. As the title suggests, it isn't primarily about what people's bodies did day to day but about what their minds did: "This landmark book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers' memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew."

lol I'm 27, and Library at Night is one my favorite books about books.

Not that that makes your comment any less hilarious ;)

Well, solidify the idea you want to convey first, then, make a map or something so you can travel through all those characters you like to create, place them, on the stories, fiction, non-fiction, western, drama, etc, etc,
some things that may help you:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Fiction-Writers-Readers/dp/0452281547

http://www.amazon.com/On-Becoming-Novelist-John-Gardner-ebook/dp/B00AB7NYZU

http://www.amazon.com/The-Writers-Journey-Structure-Edition/dp/193290736X

Relevant to this thread is Stuart Kelly's 2006 book, [The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Lost-Books-Incomplete/dp/1400062977/), which surveys several dozen lost works from Sappho (we have just a handful of works from her many volumes of poetry), Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, to Chaucer, Pope, Coleridge, Goethe and many others. It's quite a fun and enlightening read.

Since your interests are the founding fathers, you're probably in luck, as an excessive amount of work has been done on them. Many of their personal correspondences were kept, personal libraries maintained, and there's extensive historical work on them.

If any, the founding father who will most likely have philosophical works will be Thomas Jefferson. Looking at his personal library, it doesn't seem he had read Kant directly, but he had a book (published 1801) which explained Kant's philosophy. I also see Baxter, Locke, Hume, Berkeley in his collection. So it doesn't seem like Kant had an influence on the founding fathers, he was late to the party for that.

In any case, there seems to be decent historical work 1 and plenty of compilations of letters 2 3, books explicating their philosophy, and the like. I would be careful to avoid books with an obvious political slant and stick to academic texts (i.e., written by a person holding a PhD).

As far as the example with Samuel Clarke, any detailed, academic book on the history of philosophy should cover that.

I'll give you a few suggestions based on what I've read.

A good introductory book that covers many different literary theories is Peter Barry's Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Theory-Introduction-Literary-Cultural/dp/0719079276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452013996&sr=8-1&keywords=beginning+theory). His chapters on Cultural Studies and New Historicism, as well as the other chapters, are very accessible.

Robert Dale Parker's How To Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies (http://www.amazon.com/How-Interpret-Literature-Critical-Literary/dp/0199331162/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1452014126&sr=8-8&keywords=cultural+studies) focuses on major literary movements since the 1930s, and it is one of the more accessible books about the newer forms of literary theory.

Catherine Gallagher's Practicing New Historicism (http://www.amazon.com/Practicing-New-Historicism-Catherine-Gallagher/dp/0226279359/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452014436&sr=8-1&keywords=new+historicism) is an excellent and easy-to-follow-without-being-condescending introduction to this area of literary theory.

Not quite, but I appreciate it. Heard a lot about that book. I actually just found this, which looks like the exact thing I was searching for.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-History-Literature-Histories/dp/0300205317/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520025194&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+literature

This might be it, but would be interested in other suggestions

I have some but depends on what you want

About planets:
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286906911&sr=1-2

About languages:
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/098447000X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268637297&sr=1-1

i dont know about it too much but heard its good:
http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Imagination-The-Writer-Cartographer/dp/1595340416

This is THE deal:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/dp/158297103X

Another helpfull thingy:

http://www.amazon.com/Strata-Terry-Pratchett-ebook/dp/B003NX6Y6U/

There's a really classic study of the romance genre, and women's reading habits, that takes this argument apart. It's worth a read.

It is a major undertaking, and this sounds strange that you might want to read a book to interpret another book but I'd also recommend the Tindall guide as a companion. It helped me through it.

I recomend a refersher course in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

If you’re completely new to it, Ecocriticism by Greg Garrard is a useful primer.

Ayn Rand had some really great tips about overcoming writers block: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Fiction-Writers-Readers/dp/0452281547

Those are questions with many different and widely debated answers. This book by Habib, Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History, and this one by Parker, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, are two fine resources. Parker's book is a little more basic and introductory.

I hope that helps.

For further reading: Piracy and The Nature of the Book, both by Adrian Johns out of Chicago. Great stuff. If you want to know why most legal arguments invoking the history of copyright or IP in general are complete nonsense, read those books.

It’s more of a writing book than specifically worldbuilding, but Maps of the Imagination by Peter Turchi might appeal to the cartography fans of this sub.

Peter Turchi wrote about this in http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Imagination-The-Writer-Cartographer/dp/1595340416. I don't know if it's germane, as this book deals as much with composition as criticism.

I remember reading this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Life-British-Working-Classes/dp/0300153651 a few years ago and i honestly think it's still roughly the same but getting worse. That's why I'm leaning more towards the theory that bots are leading the most gullible down this road. Things don't just flip around from autodidactism to complete idiocy without a BIG push.
My little sister watched The Truman Show in Religious Education at school the other day. I think we haven't seen anything yet... but i remember at school we didn't even have R.E. most of the time and when we did we watched rubbish TV shows, shouts to the Vicar of Dibley.

You are a socialist, right? Now I may be a reactionary, but I can say that one admirable feature of historical socialist movements was their belief in the capacity of poor people to uplift themselves culturally even amidst conditions of toil and poverty. I can't imagine any of those socialists saying that the poor have no recourse but to sedate themselves with intoxicants and distractions. And how strange that a life of hopeless drudgery, malnourishment, a crippling shortage of "mental bandwith", or whatever, didn't prevent turn-of-the-century miners from becoming far more well-read and cultured than most middle-class people are today, all in a world without Google Books.