The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World
Scrolls, codices, marginalia, print and the paperback, told as episodes, arguing the book is less a container for ideas than a machine that keeps producing them.
Miller argues that the book is less a container for ideas than a machine that keeps producing them, and makes the case through episodes running from the scroll to the mass-market paperback. Anecdotal by construction, and written with an eye on what is currently being lost as the form gives up its place at the centre of the culture.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
A paean to reading and its importance, comprised of many historical anecdotes. I wish each part went into more detail, nonetheless this is an important book about a cultural transmission method that is in some unfortunate ways diminishing in its cultural centrality.
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