History of Books & Book Publishing

A very, very, very brief bibliography

Note: This list of books provides a very brief overview of the history of the book, its creation and publication, and its role in society. Each section is in alphabetical order, by author.

It has been compiled purely for fun and is based entirely on the contents of my own collection — excluding textbooks and journals — and as a result, is woefully incomplete for anyone seeking a comprehensive bibliography on the history of the book or publishing. C’est la vie.

On Books

— Burke, Peter. A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000.

— Diringer, David. The Book before Printing: Ancient, Medieval, and Oriental. New York: Dover, 1982.

— Duncan, Dennis. Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age. London: Allen Lane, 2021.

— Man, John. Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words. New York: Wiley, 2002.

— Ogborn, Miles. Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

On the Publishing Industry

— Exman, Eugene. House of Harper: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Publishing. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

— Schiffrin, André. The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read. London: Verso, 2000.

— Thompson, John B. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Plume, 2012.

On Libraries

— Bivens-Tatum, Wayne. Libraries and the Enlightenment. Los Angeles: Library Juice Press, 2012.

— Devereaux, Peter and Carla Hayden. The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2017.