The Book on the Bookshelf

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 12, 2000 - Literary Criticism - 304 pages
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. Unimpeachably researched, enviably written, and charmed with anecdotes from Seneca to Samuel Pepys to a nineteenth-century bibliophile who had to climb over his books to get into bed, The Book on the Bookshelf is indispensable for anyone who loves books.
 

Contents

From Scrolls to Codices
24
Chests Cloisters and Carrels
40
Chained to the Desk
55
The Press of Books
74
Studying Studies
100
Up Against the Wall
129
Books and Bookshops
146
Bookstack Engineering
167
IO Shelves That Move
192
The Care of Books
215
Order Order
233
Notes
253
Bibliography
269
Illustrations
279
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2000)

Henry Petroski is the Alexander S.Vesic Professor of Engineering and Professor of History at Duke University, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Bibliographic information