Review
"Darnton's book ticks all the boxes. It looks nice. It smells nice. Its content is intelligent and forms a valuable primer to an increasingly important debate."
--The Scotsman
"(an) important and highly readable book". --The Times Higher Education, December 2009
"(Digital natives) should read (The Case for Books) - and they might, because it addresses some issues that will affect them more than their elders... There is something for everyone in this book, though it is unlikely that anyone will want everything in it..."
--The TLS, 28 January 2010
`Computers may not be threatening writing, but are they threatening reading? In a series of incisive articles for the New York Review of Books, reproduced here, book historian Robert Darnton has limned the potential dangers to scholarship of the Google Book Search project. It has sloppy quality control ("Google employs thousands of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer"), and will be an unchallengeable monopoly that could, if it wanted, raise prices sharply. Like any bibliophile, Darnton finds the prospect of a universal ¬digital ¬library appealing; but physical ¬libraries, he argues, will not be made obsolete. The volume also includes essays in book history: pieces on commonplace books, the compositing of Shakespeare's plays, or Voltaire's deal-making with pirate publishers. Several of Dennis Baron's lessons are echoed here: there was never such thing as a fixed, authoritative text; the physicality of books enables serendipitous discovery; and, in a rather beautifully huffy formulation, "computerised texts communicate a specious mastery over space and time". For a moment, luxuriance in specious masteries sounded like a fine description of our whole age.'
--The Guardian, 30 January, 2010
--The Scotsman
"(an) important and highly readable book". --The Times Higher Education, December 2009
"(Digital natives) should read (The Case for Books) - and they might, because it addresses some issues that will affect them more than their elders... There is something for everyone in this book, though it is unlikely that anyone will want everything in it..."
--The TLS, 28 January 2010
`Computers may not be threatening writing, but are they threatening reading? In a series of incisive articles for the New York Review of Books, reproduced here, book historian Robert Darnton has limned the potential dangers to scholarship of the Google Book Search project. It has sloppy quality control ("Google employs thousands of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer"), and will be an unchallengeable monopoly that could, if it wanted, raise prices sharply. Like any bibliophile, Darnton finds the prospect of a universal ¬digital ¬library appealing; but physical ¬libraries, he argues, will not be made obsolete. The volume also includes essays in book history: pieces on commonplace books, the compositing of Shakespeare's plays, or Voltaire's deal-making with pirate publishers. Several of Dennis Baron's lessons are echoed here: there was never such thing as a fixed, authoritative text; the physicality of books enables serendipitous discovery; and, in a rather beautifully huffy formulation, "computerised texts communicate a specious mastery over space and time". For a moment, luxuriance in specious masteries sounded like a fine description of our whole age.'
--The Guardian, 30 January, 2010
Product Description
The era of the printed book is at a crossroad. E-readers are flooding the market, books are available to read on cell phones, and companies such as Google, Amazon, and Apple are competing to command near monopolistic positions as sellers and dispensers of digital information. Already, more books have been scanned and digitized than were housed in the great library in Alexandria. Is the printed book resilient enough to survive the digital revolution, or will it become obsolete? In this lasting collection of essays, Robert Darnton—an intellectual pioneer in the field of this history of the book—lends unique authority to the life, role, and legacy of the book in society.
