The Atlas of Atlases: Exploring the Most Important Atlases in History and the Cartographers Who Made Them by Philip Parker

Can’t decide if it’s a coffee-table book or a textbook

Ivy Press publishes a series of books on bibliographic history called Liber Historica, which as of now consists of seven volumes. I have previously read and reviewed two books from this series, Scientifica Historica and The Philosopher’s Library, about the history of science and philosophy books, respectively. Having an avid interest in book history, I liked this series enough to come back for more, and as a map enthusiast I was eager to lay my hands on The Atlas of Atlases, published in 2022. Although the title indicates that this book is about the history of atlases (because Atlas of Atlases sounds cool), the book actually covers the entire history of cartography, not just maps bound into book form. Book-length atlases didn’t really exist before the mid-16th century. This book, however, starts with the first topographical lines scratched into a prehistoric rock and ends with Google Maps and other online geographic information systems.

All of the books in the Liber Historica series are in a mini-coffee-table size (8" x 9.5") and loaded with scores of color illustrations. It’s not just a series of picture books, however. Each volume also contains a full-length scholarly monograph on its subject. In the case of The Atlas of Atlases, the text by Philip Parker is a long and difficult slog. While Parker certainly provides a sufficient history of maps an atlases, he tries too hard to sum up practically the entire history of the Western World in 270 pages. Each map presented gets a paragraph or two of description crammed with names and dates—not just who made the atlas but who financed it, to whom it was dedicated, who was king or pope at the time, and what wars were going on. There’s nothing wrong with what Parker has to say (unlike The Philosopher’s Library, where I thought there were plenty of problems with the text). The way he says it, however, often put me to sleep. This is a case where I definitely would have preferred less text and more images. A chronological list of important maps and atlases with some pertinent facts about each would have been enough for me, rather than this dense prose narrative in paragraph form. John Noble Wilford’s The Mapmakers is a better history of cartography—more comprehensive and more pleasant to read—but that book doesn’t have all of the beautiful color illustrations that adorn The Atlas of Atlases.

The 8" x 9.5" page size was fine for Liber Historica’s other books, but it doesn’t really do justice to many of these maps. Because there’s so much text, most of the illustrations aren’t even full page size. The reproduction quality is very good, but the images are just too small to make out much detail. The best use of this book is to bring your attention to landmark maps and atlases that you can then look up elsewhere. Everything prior to the 20th century is probably digitized online somewhere (Try the David Rumsey Map Collection).

From what I’ve seen so far of the Liber Historica series, the initial flagship volume, Scientifica Historica, is still the best book in the bunch. I do like the Atlas of Atlases, however, more than The Philosopher’s Library. In general, if you like books about books, these volumes will make nice additions to your shelves, and they are rather inexpensive for the production quality that you’re getting. Recent additions to the series include The Botanist’s Library, The Astronomer’s Library, and The Mathematician’s Library.

The Philosophers’ Library: Books that Shaped the World by Adam Ferner and Chris Meyns

Relentless focus on intellectual reparations

The Philosophers’ Library is an illustrated history of books on philosophy, printed in a mini-coffee table format of 8" x 9.5". Published in 2021 by Ivy Press, this is a follow-up to their similarly designed 2019 book Scientifica Historica about the history of science books. Ivy Press has since developed this into a series named Liber Historica, which now includes The Atlas of Atlases, The Anatomists’ Library, and The Astronomers’ Library. These volumes combine photographs of pages and illustrations from rare and classic books with text that one hopes would give a historical overview of the important books in the particular field in question. Like Scientifica Historica, this book is illustrated with many beautiful photographs of illuminated manuscripts and printed books. Book lovers will find it a pleasure to look at, but the text by authors Adam Ferner and Chris Meyns is not as satisfying.

Did you know that for thousands of years white men ruled the Earth, colonizing foreign lands, subduing other cultures, and stifling the voices of women and people of color? Well, in case you didn’t know that, the authors of this book remind you of it in almost every paragraph. For much of philosophy’s history, white men were the only people allowed to practice, teach, or disseminate philosophical thought. Why not just assume that your readers are intelligent enough to know that, instead of continually repeating the known fact of white colonialism? That could have been covered in a disclaimer or preface at the front of the book, so we could get on with the discussion of philosophy. Instead, all we’re told here about almost all white philosophers is that they were racists. While the effort to present a more inclusive canon is a good thing, so much space is used up in caveats on colonialism, slavery, the expatriation of cultural artifacts, and the intellectual bias enforced by white power structures that there is little left to devote to the thoughts of the thinkers discussed. While the field of philosophy has many facets, the only philosophical issues that Ferner and Meyns are interested in are racism, feminism, and colonialism. There’s almost nothing in here about epistemology, for example, and very little on ethics outside of race and gender ethics. On the other hand, the authors allow a very broad definition of philosophy that includes just about any nonfiction book that supports their interests, from history to memoir to race and gender studies.

Ferner and Meyns are to be commended, however, for striving to make this a true world history of philosophy, rather than just a recap of Western civilization. There is much more in this book about Arab, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophy than you are likely to find in any other summary survey of the discipline. And when it comes to these Eastern philosophies, the authors spend less time talking about racism, so you actually get a better idea of what these non-Western thinkers had to say. I wish there had been a bibliography, or at least of list of books discussed as in Scientifica Historica, that would make it easier to track down some of these titles in English translation.

Scientifica Historica succeeded in telling readers just enough about important historical books to make the reader think, “That’s a book I might like to read.” When you read a book about the history of books, you should come away with a reading list. With The Philosopher’s Library, you don’t learn enough about any of these philosophers or their books to accomplish that. Instead of walking away from this feeling like you got a concise but comprehensive history of philosophy that somewhat conveys an academic consensus of what’s important in the field, you feel more like you just listened to two scholars expound at length on their personal research interests, pet issues, and favorite authors.

Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet

A not very informative rattling off of titles and authors

If you are an avid reader who seeks out and collects books, or at least collects the experience of reading them, then you may find yourself seeking out books about books. One prominent subgenre within that sphere is the book collector’s memoir, of which there are many. Phantoms on the Bookshelves, originally published in 2008, is one such book collector’s memoir written by French bibliophile Jacques Bonnet. Memoirs of this type are usually written by collectors of rare and antiquarian volumes who spend a lot of money acquiring volumes to establish a library specializing in a particular subject, time period, genre, or author. Bonnet, on the other hand, considers himself a general reader and a general collector. The only requirement for a book to be added to his collection is that he might want to look at it someday. His all-encompassing love for books has resulted in a personal library of 20,000 volumes that he stores in his home. In Phantoms on the Bookshelves, Bonnet tells the reader what it’s like to own so many books, where they all come from, how he organizes his shelves, and other matters of interest to fellow bibliophiles.

Most of the book’s text consists of Bonnet bragging about his book collection, which would be fine—that’s common for these book collector memoirs—if his bragging would only teach us something about the books themselves. Instead of selecting some of his prized possessions and telling us what’s interesting about them, Bonnet just rattles off a rapid-fire stream of titles and authors. What he tells you about the books in his collection isn’t even substantial enough to be called trivia. In the back of this book is a bibliography of all the books Bonnet mentions in Phantoms on the Bookshelves. You might as well just read that, because it’s more informative than Bonnet’s prose. The most educational chapter is the book’s last, in which he discusses other people’s libraries, library fires, and book burnings.

Also typical of this genre, Bonnet talks a lot about how great reading is. As someone who loves to read, the last thing I want to read about is the pleasure of reading. Tell me something I don’t know. The text of Phantoms of the Bookshelves is sprinkled with many quotes about books and reading. If you wanted that, you could buy entire books filled with such quotes. Bonnet also hauls out the overused truism about how the internet is a useful tool, but nothing compares to the smell and feel of an actual printed book. Anyone who is enough of a bibliophile to want to read about someone else’s book collection will find such discussions generic and elementary.

What I like about Bonnet’s memoir is that you can tell he’s a reader. He buys books for their content, not for their publication history, elaborate bindings, or monetary value. In fact, he confesses that he freely writes in his books, thus depreciating their resale value. As a general reader and collector myself (though nowhere near Bonnet’s 20,000 volumes), I enjoyed his unapologetic pride in reading whatever he wants and purchasing hundreds of books he’ll probably never read, just because he likes living with them. As I read Phantoms on the Bookshelves, I felt an affinity for him as a fellow book lover, but I found myself constantly wishing that what he was telling me could be less rambling and more educational.
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Bound in Venice: The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book by Alessandro Marzo Magno

Informative but disorganized, frequently digresses into trivia

Following the pioneering of the printing press (in the Western world) by Johannes Gutenberg and others in Germany, German immigrants soon brought the technology to Venice. At that time, Venice was more than just a city in Italy, which had not yet formed into the nation we know today. The Republic of Venice included a stretch of territories in Italy, Greece, the Balkans, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Venice’s unique position as a center of world trade, a mulitcultural melting pot, a hub of intellectual activity, and a religiously tolerant environment makes it the ideal blooming ground for the publishing industry. By the early 16th century, roughly half of the books published in Europe were printed in Venice. In his 2013 book Bound in Venice, Italian journalist Alessandro Marzo Magno chronicles the rising, thriving, and eventual decline of this publishing boomtown. Along the way, he provides mini-biographies of important historical figures, such as printer extraordinaire Aldus Manutius and blockbuster author Pietro Aretino, and highlights landmark books in the history of Venetian printing.

In substance and structure, Magno’s book is similar to The Bookshop of the World, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen’s 2019 study of printing and publishing in the 17th-century Netherlands. Separate chapters cover different genres of publishing (e.g. religious books, medical books, music publishing, maps and atlases) or publishing in different languages (e.g. Hebrew, Greek, Armenian). However, unlike Pettegree and der Weduwen’s study, which is very articulate, logically organized, and really brings the time and place of its subject to life, Bound in Venice is a disorganized mess. Magno jumps all over the place chronologically, his prose lurches from one topic to another like a string of non-sequiturs, and he frequently goes off into digressions that amount to little more than trivia. He can’t seem to mention the name of a city, for example, without adding that oh, by the way, this is where some totally unrelated person comes from, be they athlete, actress, or politician of any century but the one he’s talking about. There are a whole lot of parentheses in this text, even parentheses within parentheses, and much of what’s printed between the covers of Bound in Venice could be considered merely parenthetical information. About the best one can glean from this incoherent stream of names and dates are the details of some historic firsts—first book published in Armenian, first medical book published with illustrations, first published geological treatise, first periodical, first board game, and so on. If all these firsts were compiled into an appendix, there would be no reason to read the book.

Bound in Venice is made even harder to endure by its atrocious grammar. This can likely be blamed, however, not on the author but on his translator, Gregory Conti. The English prose is replete with incomplete sentences, orphaned clauses, and unfinished thoughts. Repeated and unnecessary words abound. The punctuation is so haphazard that it almost reads as if the commas were placed by arbitrarily throwing darts at the manuscript. On the bright side, I didn’t notice many spelling errors.

Despite all its faults, those with an avid interest in the history of books are bound to find plenty of interesting nuggets of information in this miscellany of data and anecdotes. If anyone can find pleasure in a jumbled mishmash of arcane factoids, it’s a bibliophile. Just know what you’re in for. If you are looking for an authoritative history on 16th-century book production in Venice, expertly written with impeccable scholarly rigor, this isn’t it (at least not the English edition).
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Scientifica Historica by Brian Clegg

Beautifully illustrated history of science books

Scientific Historica, published in 2019, is an illustrated history of science books from ancient times to the present. It highlights important and influential science books written and published all over the world. At 8" x 9.5", filled with color images, this is a sort of mini-coffee-table volume that celebrates the history of science publishing. The author Brian Clegg is a science writer himself, best known for his book A Brief History of Infinity, published in 2003.

Even if you never actually read this book, the images alone are worth the cover price. This book reproduces covers and pages from hundreds of historic volumes. Book collectors and graphic designers will find the visuals fascinating, since the selection of images in Scientifica Historica inevitably presents a historical overview of book design, scientific illustration, and information graphics. The history begins with clay tablets and hand-copied manuscripts before moving into the age of printing. The mathematical diagrams of Euclid’s Elements, the functional planetary charts of Peter Bienewitz’s Astronomicum Caesareum, the chemical hieroglyphics of John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy, and the botanical and zoological etchings of many a 19th-century naturalist are both a visual and intellectual joy to behold. The illustrations get somewhat less impressive as the narrative moves into the late twentieth century, at which point the glory days of scientific illustrations, diagrams, and maps seem to have passed, and the images presented are book covers only.

While the illustrations are very interesting to look through, the writing is often pretty dry. This isn’t really a history of science, after all, but rather a history of science writing. Clegg discusses such matters as how English replaced Latin as the dominant lingua franca of science, or how the field of science writing gradually moved from specialized treatises for highly educated readers to more popular science books for the general reading public. Some of the books discussed are included because they were very important in the history of science, like Newton’s Principia Mathematica or Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Others, like Audubon’s Birds of America or Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, are highlighted because they achieved a level of popularity that allowed them to successfully bring science education to the masses.

Scientifica Historica is a well-conceived study of its subject that manages to be both comprehensive and concise. Although the text isn’t always exciting reading, Clegg does describe the contents of each historic volume well enough for the reader to decide whether he or she would like to read the book in question. An appendix lists the 150 major books discussed in the text (though additional books are mentioned briefly), providing an impressive reading list for those interested in the history of science. About two-thirds of those texts are old enough to be in the public domain, and so free downloadable copies should exist online. For any reader with more than a passing interest in the history of science or the history of the book, browsing through this attractive volume certainly inspires one to seek out and read some of these landmark scientific works of the past. 

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On These Walls: Inscriptions and Quotations in the Buildings of the Library of Congress by John Y. Cole. Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith

The public art of America’s secular cathedral

On These Walls, published in 2008, is a photography book showcasing the art and architecture of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The subtitle, “Inscriptions & Quotations,” makes the book sound less exciting than it is. It’s not really so much about the quotes and text that adorn the LOC’s walls but more about the visuals that accompany them. This book is chock full of beautiful photographs of the murals, mosaics, sculptures, stained glass windows, and architectural details of the world’s largest library. The images include artworks found in the Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams buildings. The Jefferson building, however, being the Library’s flagship edifice that was lavishly decorated in the late 19th century, is the main attraction and gets the lion’s share of coverage.

At 9 x 10 inches and a half an inch thick, this isn’t quite a coffee table book, but it certainly isn’t a pocket guidebook either. The paper is of high quality, and the printing is impeccable. The photography is by Carol Highsmith, one of America’s greatest documentary photographers of the 20th century. After taking hundreds of thousands of photos all over America, she donated her entire body of work to the Library of Congress and graciously entered all her images into the public domain. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting photographer for this subject.

The photographs here include very few room-sized interior shots. Almost all the pictures focus on a particular work of art. This is not a comprehensive guide that attempts to document every artwork in these buildings. Instead, it gives the reader a general idea of the decorative theme or scheme in each room or hallway, and then shows a couple examples from each room. The captions provide information on the artists who created the artworks and also describes paintings and sculptures that are not pictured. For example, the text tells you that the Northwest Corridor of the Jefferson Building has nine lunettes (semicircular murals) painted by Edward Simmons depicting the nine Muses of Greek Mythology. It shows you photographs of two of these Muses, then lists the rest, also pointing out that under each Muse is a quotation by Alexander Pope. The photos are so beautiful they leave the reader wishing for more. Perhaps there is a book out there that documents every single artwork in the LOC, but if so it would be a huge and expensive book.

I have an art degree, but I only recognized the name of one artist discussed in this book: Elihu Vedder. Unfortunately, this romantic style of allegorical figurative art from the Gilded Age has since fallen out of favor among art scholars and critics, but On These Walls celebrates these great artists as they deserve. Not only is the art beautiful, but the symbolism is interesting and the subject matter inspiring. The Library of Congress is the ultimate monument to America’s intellectual heritage, similar to the Panthéon in Paris, but minus the tombs. (The art and inscriptions in the LOC actually celebrate achievements of all nations, but with a clear emphasis on European heritage and a predominance of American names.) Each room celebrates great achievements in literature, the arts, sciences, humanities, and industry. Like the cathedrals of Renaissance Europe, the decorative art delivers both an education and a sermon, but in this case it’s a secular sermon, one that champions human intellect and creative intrepidity. That’s a fitting message for an American library, and this is one library, and one book, that will make you proud to be an American.  

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The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen

Oh, to be a printer in 17th century Holland!

In the 17th century, the Netherlands was one of the most literate countries in the world and published more books per capita than any other nation. In fact, as authors Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen convincingly argue in their 2019 book The Bookshop of the World, books should be the export for which Holland is renowned, rather than its tulips and cheese. During the 1600s, not only were wealthy collectors, intellectual professors, and studious clergymen amassing impressive personal libraries, but even common Dutch working stiffs also managed to prioritize much of their meager disposable income towards the purchase of books. In this copiously researched and detail-rich study, Pettegree and der Weduwen take the reader on a comprehensive tour of the publishing, printing, and bookselling industries in the 17th-century Netherlands. Along the way, they impart a wealth of information on the region’s political, religious, and economic history, perhaps more than most book lovers would ever want to know.

In the 1600s, the Netherlands included what is now Belgium and Luxembourg, or at least parts of them. The authors’ particular focus of concern here, however, is specifically Holland, the Protestant stronghold of the Dutch Republic of the North, as opposed to the predominantly Catholic Spanish Netherlands of the South. Holland included the two major centers of publishing, Amsterdam and Leiden, the latter home to the nation’s flagship university and therefore a center of scholarly publishing. Pettegree and der Weduwen also cover the rest of the Netherlands to a lesser extent. The Dutch were not only master publishers but also master marketers, allowing them to dominate the book trade in other European countries and languages, often drawing the ire of those nations whose own publishing industries suffered from the competition.

The text is divided into thematic chapters examining various aspects of the printing and publishing industries, such as political pamphlets, newspapers, religious treatises (of both Protestant and Catholic persuasion), exploration narratives, university dissertations, medical texts, and schoolbooks, prayer books, and almanacs aimed at the working and middle classes. Despite such categorical divisions, readers never lose sight of the overarching chronological history of the Netherlands, which the authors skillfully maintain throughout. At times they assume a pre-existing knowledge of Dutch history on the part of the reader, but for the most part a reasonably historically informed reader can follow along without getting lost.

The thoroughness of Pettegree and der Weduwen’s research is staggering. They seem to have read, catalogued, and statistically analyzed just about everything published in the Netherlands during this period. They combine all this data into an incredibly informative and well-written historical study. The problem is the question of who would want to read it. This is really a very specialized scholarly monograph on 17th-century Dutch history. The primary audience is the authors’ academic peers in the field. The authors, however, obviously consider this subject eminently fascinating and write the book as if everyone should be equally fascinated by it. They almost pull it off by doing a very good job of making the subject accessible to general readers. Even so, only the most avid enthusiasts of book history—rare book librarians and collectors, for example—will be willing to wade through so much arcane knowledge of early Dutch printing. I work in scholarly publishing, so I found the information on the origins of the university press and the Elzevier publishing empire quite interesting. As someone with Dutch heritage, I also enjoyed the vivid historical glimpse into the politics and religion of the literate and intellectual culture in which my ancestors lived. This book may not be for casual readers, but it provides an eye-opening education for those open to learning a lot about this subject.
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An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students by Ronald Brunlees McKerrow

How books were made from 1500 to 1800

Although published in 1927, English bibliographer Ronald Brunlees McKerrow’s An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students is still a fundamental text for scholars and collectors of early printed books. This book is a detailed guide to how books are printed, or rather were printed, in the days before the industrial revolution (although much of the basic process has remained the same even with today’s modern machinery). McKerrow wrote the book for an audience of literary scholars who study old books and manuscripts. In general, he emphasizes the works of authors from Shakespeare’s time and earlier. He asserts, however, that the process of printing books didn’t change much from the years 1500 to 1800, so the information given can be applied to most works printed during that time span.

Nowadays, when a publisher prints 25,000 copies of a book, all of those copies pretty much look identical. That was not the case in the days of hand-set type and hand-cranked presses. Printers would make corrections as they went along, and each copy would have its own distinct characteristics. Sometimes, by studying the differences in printing between two copies, it is possible to surmise which was printed earlier or later, thus helping the literary scholar to discern which iteration could be considered the original, the corrected, the authoritative, or the defective version of the text. McKerrow instructs the reader on how to identify and describe these variations in copies and editions as a means of illuminating a book’s history. McKerrow’s detailed explanation of the printing process also elucidates how errors enter into the text between the author’s manuscript and the final printed book. All of this is useful to the literary scholar in that it helps to establish the author’s original intent and thus broaden understanding of the literary work and the author in question.

As a sort of field guide to rare early printed books, McKerrow’s Introduction to Bibliography is comprehensive and authoritative, but it is far from user-friendly. I have worked most of my adult life in book design, printing, and publishing, yet even I found this book quite difficult to understand at times. That’s not because of the arcane terminology, some of which was familiar to me and the rest of which I actually enjoyed learning, but because of McKerrow’s convoluted explanations. The book is chock full of footnotes, but to be honest the main text of the book reads like footnotes as well. McKerrow spends so much time highlighting irregular examples (he clearly revels in citing the most esoteric anomalies possible) that it’s hard for the reader to see the forest for the trees. Though one needs to know exceptions to the rules, this book often reads like all exceptions and no rules. I read a facsimile of the original 1927 edition, and it clearly could have used more illustrations. When discussing early printing presses, for example, McKerrow goes into a lengthy, almost indecipherable knee-bone’s-connected-to-the-shin-bone description of the machinery, when one simple labeled diagram would have been far more effective. In discussing typography, he even verbally describes typefaces, rather than showing the reader examples.

Though it’s not an easy or always pleasurable book to get through, for those interested in old books and bibliography it is worth the work. In the past century, others have no doubt published more accessible guides on the subject, but it’s hard to imagine anyone cramming in as much content and specificity as McKerrow has done here. Though intended for literary students, there is much valuable information here for collectors, librarians, or just curious and avid readers.
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Hernando Colón’s New World of Books: Toward a Cartography of Knowledge by José María Pérez Fernández and Edward Wilson-Lee

Pioneering information science in a remarkable Renaissance library

Hernando Colón was the second, and illegitimate, son of Christopher Columbus. He also wrote one of the first published biographies of his illustrious father. Hernando, however, was also an important man in his own right, an accomplished scholar, and a collector of books who assembled an ambitious research library of over 15,000 volumes. In 2018, author Edward Wilson-Lee published a very intriguing biography of Hernando entitled The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books. My only complaint about that biography was that I wished it had focused more on Hernando’s library. Well, my wish has been granted, and then some, with the 2021 publication of Hernando Colón’s New World of Books by Wilson-Lee and José María Pérez Fernández.

While The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books was aimed at a more general reading audience, Hernando Colón’s New World of Books reads like a scholarly monograph aimed at an audience of Renaissance historians and rare book librarians. It will also appeal, however, to general readers (like myself) with an avid enthusiasm for bibliographic history and a high tolerance for arcane minutiae regarding books and libraries. Hernando wasn’t just a collector of books; he was an obsessive organizer and cataloger of information. The various schemes he invented to catalog, summarize, and access the books in his massive collection might just make him the most important figure in library cataloging between Kallimachos and the Dewey Decimal System. Pérez Fernández and Wilson-Lee examine Hernando’s numerous projects of information management. They point out how his methods were manifestations of the spirit of Renaissance Humanism yet also ahead of their time in how Hernando ordered, categorized, and made sense of the world. To their credit, the authors do not hammer home this thesis relentlessly like many scholarly monographs do. In fact, any overarching argument often seems lost in a morass of detail. Nevertheless, bibliophiles will find it a pleasurable and fascinating morass of detail.

This book is loaded with information on how Hernando established his library and purchased his books. The authors explain how he adapted existing Renaissance networks and mechanisms of international trade and finance to gather and circulate information rather than money. Hernando was also involved in a massive cartographic project to reconcile and consolidate various existing maps and explorer logs into one cohesive and authoritative master map, as well as a pet project of his own to gather detailed geographic information on all the towns in Spain. Pérez-Fernández and Wilson-Lee delve deeply into Hernando’s intricate practices of cataloging and abstracting (in his Book of Epitomes) the volumes in his collection. They also provide a history of what happened to the library after Hernando’s death. The text closes with a handful of important primary source documents either written by Hernando or pertaining to his library. The most interesting of these is the Memoria written by Hernando’s head librarian Juan Pérez, who provides even more delightful details on the workings of the library.

Hernando Colón’s New World of Books is not for the casual reader. By all means read The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books first, if you haven’t done so already. If you find that book as interesting as I did, and you want a whole lot more information on Hernando and his library, then and only then is this the book for you. Those who dare enter here, however, will be happy to get lost in Hernando’s library. The reader will gain a profound admiration for this important unsung Renaissance man and wonder why the memory of his magnificent library has faded into obscurity.
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ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter and Nicolas Barker

The arcane terminology of bibliophilia

ABC for Book Collectors is an alphabetical guide to all the arcane terminology used by bibliophiles engaged in the hunting and gathering of antiquarian books and documents, a discipline in which many of the terms employed originated in the printing, publishing, and bookselling industries of centuries past. The ABC is published by Oak Knoll Press, a publisher that specializes in books about book collecting and the history of books and printing. The first edition was written by John Carter (1905-1975) and published in 1952, and it has since been updated by Nicolas Barker. Both are English, so there is a slight Britcentric tilt to the text, but they clarify when American terminology differs from that used in the bookshops of London. I read the eighth edition of this book, which was published in 2006. A ninth edition, illustrated with photographs and diagrams, was published by Oak Knoll in 2016. The eighth edition has no illustrations.

The entries in this ABC include names for different parts of books, different stages in a book’s production, printing and typesetting terminology, and many different binding materials (types of animal skins, cloth, paper, etc.). The main purpose of this book is to serve as a glossary for reading descriptions in booksellers’ and auction catalogues, so frequently used adjectives of condition, rarity, and provenance are also included. Also valuable are references to authoritative texts and bibliographies that collectors and sellers tend to refer to only by the last name of the author (e.g. McKerrow, Greg, Sadleir), or by acronym (e.g. ESTC [English Short Title Catalogue]). The average entry in the ABC is more extensive than a dictionary definition yet smaller than an encyclopedia item. Enough information is provided to not only define the terms but also impart some interesting nuggets of book history.

The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) provides a free pdf of the eighth edition on its website. Presumably this is to encourage more people to take up the avocation of book collecting, which of course would be a positive thing for the members of this organization. The way this book is written, however, is not very user-friendly nor very inviting to the prospective collector. I am not a book collector, but I have worked my whole life in publishing, printing, book design, libraries, and archives, and I still found many of these convoluted definitions difficult to decipher. The authors have made more of an effort to be stylish and sound erudite than to be clear and educate the reader. The ABC doesn’t read as if it were written for beginners who actually need the information but rather for experienced aficionados who are sure to chuckle at the inside jokes, roll their eyes at examples of book collecting faux pas, and nod knowingly at statements beginning with, “Of course, everyone knows that . . .” The entries are not just insufficiently clear in their explanation of arcane terminology but also often rather off-putting in tone. This book gives one the impression that book collectors are not a welcoming community but rather a coven of snooty and insecure elitists scornful of novices. Not having seen the earlier editions of the ABC, I can’t say whether this is the fault of Carter or Barker.

Despite its annoying and obscure passages, book lovers can learn a lot from ABC for Book Collectors. Someone seriously interested in embarking in book collecting, however, would probably be better off starting with a non-alphabetic introduction to bibliography, such as those by Ronald B. McKerrow (1927), Fredson Bowers (1947), or Philip Gaskell (1972).
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The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer

Protecting cultural heritage from al-Qaeda

During the Middle Ages, when Europe was experiencing an extended descent towards barbarism, Islamic scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and poets played an important role in carrying the torch of knowledge and advancing intellectual discourse. Western history books tend to depict sub-Saharan Africa as a cultural blank slate until the modern era, but from the 13th to the 17th century the city of Timbuktu in the nation of Mali was a thriving center of Islamic learning and written scholarship. Prior to the printing press, ideas were disseminated through hand-copied manuscripts, usually written on parchment and often augmented by beautiful painted illustrations and elaborately decorated bindings.

In his 2016 book The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, journalist Joshua Hammer reveals that hundreds of thousands of these historic manuscripts have survived to the present day, mostly hidden in the homes of private citizens and passed down within families for generations. Hammer explains how in the last few decades cultural heritage organizations, and one dedicated librarian in particular, began collecting these manuscripts and transferring them to newly built libraries so they could be restored and preserved, thus making centuries-old texts newly accessible to contemporary scholars.

In this book, Hammer provides a revealing glimpse into Timbuktu’s centuries-old history as a center of learning, but he also gives the reader a vivid view of life in contemporary Mali. He meticulously charts the 21st-century rise of Islamic jihadism in North Africa, which poses a severe threat to the existence of these priceless artifacts. When a combined force of al-Qaeda militants and Tuareg rebels invaded northern Mali, Timbuktu was occupied by a jihadist government that instituted a brutally draconian form of Sharia law. Under this ultraconservative interpretation of Islam, the manuscripts were seen as immoral and targeted for destruction. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible and inspiring story of how a few brave Malian librarians, with the help of many local volunteers and international donors, managed to save hundreds of thousands of these medieval manuscripts by smuggling them out from under al-Qaeda’s nose.

If you are approaching this book as a bibliophile or lover of libraries, be forewarned that the majority of the story is about politics, terrorism, and military activity. The manuscripts themselves only feature prominently in the first few chapters of the book. Nevertheless, even though I’m not one to buy books on current political events, I found Hammer’s telling of this story captivating from beginning to end. He delves into a great deal of detail on Islamic terrorists and the formation of their various factions, but he does so in an articulate style that makes the history accessible and memorable even to news-challenged general readers. I learned quite a bit about Islam from this book, not just the negative aspects we see on the news, such as terrorism and war, but also the positive aspects of Islamic culture and the intellectual tradition of Islamic science, arts, and letters in African history. Hammer’s skillfully penned account delivers an eye-opening education amid a political thriller that will have you rooting for these unsung book-saving heroes.
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The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Meandering history of the Los Angeles Public Library

In 1986, the central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library almost burnt to the ground. The largest library fire in American history destroyed or damaged over a million books. Local authorities ruled the cause of the fire as arson, but no one was ever convicted of the crime. Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, learned about the fire after moving to Los Angeles in 2011. She decided to do some research into this tragic event, and the result is The Library Book, published in 2018. The marketing copy for this book leads one to believe this is a true-crime book focusing on the fire and the investigation that followed, as well as some institutional history into how the library recovered from the damage. It is all that, and more. Orlean casts a very wide net that encompasses the entire history of the Los Angeles Public Library while veering off into several tenuous digressions.

Throughout the book Orlean asserts the importance of libraries to their community, not just in L.A. but throughout the United States. Orlean is obviously a lover of libraries and a strong advocate for them. I am also a library enthusiast, have a library science degree, and often read books on the history and present state of libraries. Even though I would consider myself the target audience for this book, I still found it rather boring and underwhelming. The most interesting portions of the book cover the L.A. library’s early history and the quirky characters who directed the institution through the early twentieth century. Orlean’s accounts of her recent visits to the library are laden with praise and amazement but offer few surprises. She writes about libraries as if she’s writing for someone who’s never set foot in one. There is much stating of the obvious here, though to Orlean’s credit, her book provides a more insightful overview of what librarians actually do than Marilyn Johnson’s frivolous exposition of the profession, This Book Is Overdue!

Another problem with the book is that in addition to the history and the investigative journalism, Orlean feels the need to make this a memoir, so one gets to hear a lot about her personal thoughts and feelings on libraries, which aren’t necessarily any more valid or articulate than the reader’s own. In one such first-person chapter Orlean wants to know how it feels to burn a book, as if that would put her inside the mind of an arsonist. Instead, it just feels like pointless self-indulgence or a means of padding the page count. A chapter on the worldwide history of book burning is more interesting, but it still feels like a stretch to equate political book burning with pyromaniacal arson. In regard to the arson itself, Orlean provides a mini-biography of the prime suspect, whom she oddly tries to make into some sort of tragic hero. Harry Peak was never convicted of the arson, and the evidence against him was circumstantial, so the true-crime narrative feels disappointingly inconclusive. If Peak did commit the crime, then Orlean treats him far too sympathetically. If he didn’t commit the crime, then the in-depth attention paid to him seems rather unnecessary.

If you live in Los Angeles and feel a connection to your Public Library, then by all means read this book. You will likely enjoy it very much. Those who live elsewhere, however, no matter how much you love books and libraries, won’t necessarily feel a connection to Orlean’s meandering love letter to L.A.’s central branch. Library professionals, who would usually love a book like this, may find Orlean’s coverage of the field too elementary to educate and too bland to entertain.
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The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found by Violet Moller

Whirlwind tour through a millennium of scholarship
The intellectual foundations of Western civilization were laid by the philosophers and scholars of ancient Greece. The original scrolls that documented their words of wisdom have long since disintegrated, so the earliest surviving manuscripts of Greek texts are copies of copies. The fact that any of these writings have survived to the present day is rather amazing, and the story of how they survived is fascinating. In her 2019 book The Map of Knowledge, historian Violet Moller gives credit where it’s due to the scribes, translators, scholars, and collectors who kept this knowledge alive through the Dark Ages. Moller covers roughly a thousand years of history, circa 500 to 1500, from the decline of the Western Roman Empire to the birth of the printing press and rise of the Renaissance. In telling this epic story, Moller organizes her narrative around seven cities—Alexandria, Baghdad, Córdoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo, and Venice—each of which successively supplanted its predecessor as the Western world’s leading center of books and learning.

To narrow down what would otherwise be a huge and ungainly study, Moller focuses on the works of three scholars who were at the apex of their respective fields: Euclid (mathematics), Ptolemy (astronomy), and Galen (medicine). The prolific Galen alone is responsible for roughly half of the extant writings from ancient Greece. Moller not only charts the history of ideas but also the world events and political figures that helped foster those ideas. The book highlights emperors and kings who patronized scholars and established legendary centers of learning, such as the Great Library of Alexandria, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the Schola Medica in Salerno. The chapters on Baghdad and Córdoba are of particular interest because they highlight the contributions of Arab and Muslim scholars and scientists whose invaluable contributions to Western civilization are little known to most American readers.

With so much geographical ground and temporal scope to cover, Moller can only provide a whirlwind tour of these thousand years. Some key characters are granted extensive biographical sketches, but often an important figure will only be mentioned in a sentence or two before the narrative must rush on to the next succeeding stage of scientific enlightenment. Nevertheless, the reader is introduced to many fascinating lesser-known figures, such as al-Khwarizmi, the brilliant Persian mathematician who invented algebra; Gerard of Cremona, the hardest working translator in medieval Toledo; Roger II, the Sicilian king who transformed Palermo into an intellectual mecca; and Erhard Ratdolt, the pioneering book printer whose work rivaled that of the more famous Aldus Manutius.

Intended for general readers, this book is very clearly written without any challenging academic jargon, and explanatory footnotes spell out some very elementary concepts for those unfamiliar with ancient or medieval history. Even so, the very nature of the subject and Moller’s vast breadth of scope demands a confusing tangle of detail that may very well prove exhausting to the general history buff. One really has to be an enthusiast of rare books and their history to appreciate The Map of Knowledge. Such bibliophiles, however may be unsatisfied by the briskness with which Moller rushes through these thousand years. While novice readers might find it hard to see the forest for the trees, more knowledgeable readers will wish the tour bus would slow down a bit so they could enjoy the scenery.
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World’s Greatest Library by Edward Wilson-Lee

Bites off a little more than it can chew
Many histories have been written about Christopher Columbus and his voyages to America. One of the first books to tell his story was written by his own son, Hernando Colón (a.k.a. Ferdinand Columbus), who accompanied his father on his fourth voyage to the New World. Hernando, however, was more than just his father’s son. He led an astonishing life of his own, which author Edward Wilson-Lee chronicles in The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, published in 2018.

Hernando was the second, and illegitimate, son of Christopher Columbus. As a youth, while his father was off exploring the New World for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Hernando was a page in the court of their son, Prince Juan. He spent much of his adult life traveling around Europe with the court of King Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Hernando was an accomplished scholar, author, diplomat, geographer, and cartographer, but his real love was collecting books and printed pamphlets. He established a library in Seville that amounted to more than 15,000 volumes. A true Renaissance man, Hernando attempted to amass a universal collection that would comprehensively encompass all fields of knowledge and culture in all languages.

There’s no question that Hernando Colón led a fascinating life, but in this book his story is somewhat smothered under too much historical context. Wilson-Lee thinks the reader needs to know the life story of every pope and prince in Renaissance Europe, which results in countless tangents that distract from the primary narrative of Hernando, his family, and his library. Although I enjoy reading exploration narratives and explorer biographies, my primary interest in this book was Hernando’s library, which is really what makes his story so unique. After covering Columbus’s voyages, Wilson-Lee doesn’t really even begin to get into Hernando’s bibliophilia until about page 150. Even then, he only gradually eases into Hernando’s collecting habits, while the history of the library competes with all the other threads of political, religious, and legal history. The last few chapters, however, focus almost exclusively on Hernando’s library and art collection.

Hernando was not only an obsessive collector, he was also an obsessive cataloger. The numerous lists and annotated bibliographies he compiled were the precursors of the card catalogs, bibliographic metadata, and search engines employed by modern librarians. Wilson-Lee describes at length the various catalogs that Hernando created for his collections, but it would have been far more effective if he had excerpted a page or two from each list so the reader could get a better idea of each cataloging system and its entries. Wilson-Lee makes much of the fact that the Renaissance was an era in which humanist scholars strove to bring order to our understanding of nature and the universe. Thus, every time Hernando learns something or writes something down he is said to be “ordering the world.” Wilson-Lee hammers this point home so relentlessly that the text often reads more like a dissertation than a trade book for the general public.

The story of Hernando’s battle to save his father’s reputation and legacy deserves a book of its own. So does his quest to build the world’s greatest library. When the two are crammed together into one volume, while also trying to summarize the entire Renaissance history of Western Europe, everything gets short-changed in the process. Nevertheless, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books still delivers a great deal of fascinating information on early print culture and the intellectual history of Renaissance Europe. Wilson-Lee also helpfully provides ample bibliographic references for the reader to launch further research into Hernando and his library. Anyone interested in Columbus or the history of books will find this a very stimulating and informative read.
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“The Tools of My Trade”: The Annotated Books in Jack London’s Library by David Mike Hamilton

A mind map of London’s marginalia
Jack London was not only a prolific author but also a voracious reader. As indicated by the title of David Mike Hamilton’s 1986 book “The Tools of My Trade,” London saw books as the raw materials and instruments by which he plied his literary craft. In this in-depth study of London’s personal library, Hamilton charts the lengths to which other writers’ books influenced London’s intellectual development and served as source material for his own writings.

The book opens with an excellent 47 page essay in which Hamilton traces London’s life as a reader. Based on books that London discussed in his letters, mentioned in his published writings, or noted in unpublished manuscripts, Hamilton is able to piece together in great detail which books London read at various points in his career and how those books influenced his thought and writings. Other London studies often touch upon major names like Darwin, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Jung, but Hamilton delves far deeper into London’s pool of influences.

At the time of London’s death, his library consisted of about 15,000 volumes. Of that impressive total, Hamilton has compiled a bibliography of almost 600 books, pamphlets, and periodicals that contain handwritten notes by London, inscriptions from authors and friends, and/or enclosures such as letters, articles, or news clippings. Depending on the degree to which London marked up his copy, Hamilton either summarizes London’s notations or quotes them verbatim. Because London died in 1916, all the books mentioned are in the public domain, and one can find digitzed editions of over 90 percent of these works at the HathiTrust website.

As one might expect, frequent topics in London’s library include socialism, Hawaii, sailing and navigation, Alaska and the Yukon, poetry, and evolution. The high quantity of titles in psychoanalysis and sexuality is more surprising. The contents of London’s library do not entirely reflect well on him, since the list does include books on white supremacy. Beyond his pet interests, browsing London’s shelves allows the reader to experience the breadth and depth of knowledge enjoyed by an early-twentieth-century American intellectual. It is always fascinating to browse through the legacy libraries of historic personages. Rarely, however, does a bibliographer make the kind of concrete connections that Hamilton establishes between the books an author has read and those he has written. Through exhaustive research of London’s library, correspondence, and literary oeuvre, Hamilton is able to draw these linkages, providing London aficionados with an exceptionally clear vision of the author’s intellectual development and working methods.

The only problem with “The Tools of My Trade” is that it contains an inordinate number of typographical errors—an unforgiveable fault in the detail-oriented discipline of bibliography. While the author is very good about noting London’s spelling errors with [sic], the proofreading of Hamilton’s own text was not very thorough. What’s worse is that many of the errors occur in the titles of books and the names of authors. When compared to the actual title pages of the volumes he’s citing, Hamilton has authors listed as Grieg instead of Greig, Kish instead of Kisch, Mathe instead of Mather, Nedig instead of Neidig, Pennoll instead of Pennell, and those are just the few that I bothered to jot down. Errors occasionally occur in titles as well, such as “Human” instead of “Humane,” and also in Hamilton’s descriptive copy. One work described as a “small pamphlet” is listed as having 614 pages. Such inaccuracies make it difficult for researchers to track down and utilize the works that Hamilton has so thoroughly researched and compiled.
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A Glance at Private Libraries by Luther Farnham

The state of New England’s book collections in 1855
A Glance at Private Libraries is an 80-page pamphlet published in 1855 by Luther Farnham, a church pastor, journalist, and theological librarian. The text was originally an address that Farnham gave to the New England Historic-Genealogical Society. He begins his essay by proclaiming that The United States has proven itself equal to Europe in industry, education, and natural beauty. He laments, however, America’s inability to compete with the Old World in one specific area: libraries. Farnham suggests that building up America’s libraries is a necessary step towards elevating the nation’s standards of learning and culture. The public libraries of the time, at least in Boston, could not boast sizable collections, but Farnham finds hope in the libraries of private collectors. In A Glance at Private Libraries, he briefly describes the holdings of many private book collectors in Boston and greater New England.

The book collectors that Farnham profiles include William H. Prescott, author of The History of the Conquest of Mexico; Charles F. Adams, the son of John Quincy Adams; Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist author; and a number of Massachusetts congressmen. The purpose of Farnham’s address seems to be to introduce the gentlemen of the Historic Society to the private libraries of the region, thus facilitating introductions between collectors, readers, and researchers with similar interests. One gets the feeling that, just as in ancient Rome, the only people who really got to enjoy or utilize these libraries are rich white men and perhaps their wives. Eventually, however, most of the materials in these collections likely ended up in the research libraries of America’s colleges and universities, thus fulfilling Farnham’s goal of building robust libraries accessible to the public.

Farnham gives a run-down of the categorical strengths in each library: One collector is big on American antiquity, another collects volumes on medical science, and so forth. At times Farnham also singles out a few of a collector’s most valuable holdings for special attention. If you are a lover of old books and libraries, you’ll find many details of interest, but, like a lot of books on this subject, the writing often reads like a catalog of assorted highlights that can only partially convey the wealth of knowledge contained in these collections. Farnham is acquainted with some of the collectors he profiles and has obviously spent a fair amount of time in their libraries. He also corresponded with other library owners he never met, who responded with written descriptions of their collections. As a result, the libraries that get the most coverage don’t necessarily have the best collections. They’re just the ones with which Farnham has a greater degree of familiarity. Hence, most of the book focuses on Boston libraries, with only brief accounts given of outliers in greater Massachusetts or Connecticut. New Haven’s George Brinley, for example, one of history’s greatest collectors of Americana, only receives a single sentence of mention.

Though limited in scope to New England, Farnham’s pamphlet serves as a sort of state-of-the-union assessment of America’s libraries in the mid-19th century. By importing historic European books and preserving early American texts, private collectors like those Farnham profiles laid the groundwork for America’s great research libraries, thus enriching education, scholarship, and research in the United States. A Glance at Private Libraries may not be the most gripping of reads, but it stands as a valuable historical document of these collectors’ achievements
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