Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

For two and a half thousand years, books have been used to entertain, to govern, to record, to educate and to worship - one of the most versatile, useful and enduring technologies ever invented.

Books: A Living History charts the evolution and influence of books, from Sumerian clay tablets through the development of moveable type to the emergence of eBooks and digital technology. The carefully selected illustrations include Mayan codices, Egyptian papyrus scrolls, medieval illuminated manuscripts, printing by Gutenberg and Aldus Manutius, children's books, dime novels, Japanese manga and works of fiction from Don Quixote to Level 26 , the world's first 'digi-novel', and beyond.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this sumptuously illustrated history of the book, Lyons (Ordinary Writing, Personal Narratives) covers a millennia of changes, from ancient Mesopotamian carvings to Gutenberg's innovations in printing, through the computer age and the advent of the Internet and e-readers. Rather than narrate a continuous story, he utilizes two to four page chronological sections with headings such as "Luther's Bible," "Books of the Scientific Revolution," and "Atlases and Cartography." With such heterogeneous segments, it's difficult to discern the principle of inclusion or exclusion. Meanwhile, the many illustrations serve as interesting (though non-essential) window-dressing for the text, as with the splendid images from the Book of Kells or the detailed drawings of mechanized printing presses. Larger than a typical hardback yet smaller than a coffee table book, the contents seem similarly torn between a textbook's dry specificity and the generality of a popular history. However, this approachable and attractive volume summarizes key moments in the evolution of print culture, in a tone suitable for an unfamiliar or general interest reader. Scholars will find nothing new, and will likely be disappointed by the book's aggressive superficiality. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Lyons (Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) offers an ambitious, beautifully illustrated work that covers the history of the book from its Sumerian beginnings on clay tablets to the present digital age with e-readers. In this volume, which is arranged in five chapters that are roughly chronological, Lyons does not attempt to provide a detailed chronology. Rather, he prefers to focus on "local stories [that] define global trends" from ancient worlds to the present. The illustrations, which are noteworthy for their number and size, will help engage readers. Topics include the development of the publishing industry; the role of books in the spread of scientific knowledge; genres of print as diverse as children's books, encyclopedias, and romance novels; the rise of paperbacks; Japanese Manga; and even the Nobel Prize in Literature. The range of topics is too diverse to provide a thorough narrative, but the book is a fine introduction to the range of subject matter of interest to book historians and their students, along with those who love books as objects or literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. G. B. Barnhill American Antiquarian Society

Booklist Review

In this electronic age, books have come under attack as antiquated, superfluous, and destructive of the earth's forests. As Lyons points out, the book has endured threats throughout the millennia, and it bids fair to survive our pixilated era as well. Books emerged in the ancient world, their antecedents surfacing in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Restricted at first to elites of government, commerce, and religion, books served as early data banks, repositories of human knowledge. By the Classical period, large cities already harbored libraries. The Renaissance and the invention of printing presses spread bookfuls of revolutionary ideas across the globe. Development of near-universal literacy by the nineteenth century and concepts of copyright, royalties, and publishing made books ubiquitous. Lyons documents all this history, amply illustrating every topic with full-color photographs. He does a particularly good job of introducing little-known books, such as tsarist Russian lubki, which anticipate today's wildly popular Japanese manga, both offering pictures and text.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2010 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Martin Lyons is Professor in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He has published widely on the history of books and reading, including Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France: Workers, Women, Peasants and Ordinary Writings , Personal Narratives: Writing Practices in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Europe .