Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

by Dennis Duncan

Most of us give little thought to the back of the book-it's just where you go to look things up. But here is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known history.

Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians, and-of course-indexers along the way. Duncan reveals the vast role of the index in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, and he shows that in the Age of Search we are all index-rakers at heart.

• ISBN10: 1324002549
• ISBN13: 9781324002543
• Publish Date: 15 February 2022
• Publish Status: Forthcoming
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: WW Norton & Co
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Index, A History of the is a fun and accessible look at the genesis and philosophy behind the humble (or not so humble) index capably examined by Dr. Dennis Duncan. Due out 15th Feb 2022 from W.W. Norton, it's 352 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats (hardcover available now). It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This could have been a dry-as-dust straight rendering of a sometimes-unsung bit of biblio-history. It could have been a dull recitation of facts, and figures, and sources. It's anything but. There is a fair amount of history involved, but there's also a pervasive self-deprecating humour alongside the facts and figures. There are places which are slyly winking at the foibles of innumerable bookish sorts throughout the past; we're invited to grin indulgently alongside academic quarrels hundreds of years old, their original combatants long passed, but their registered grievances laid open for our perusal.There's philosophy and thought aplenty, and, I confess, very much about which I'd never stopped to ponder.

The book is full of extant examples of the genesis (of necessity and efficiency) of the humble index. There are thoughts about what an index really -is- and why it has the form it has. There's an interesting examination of atypical indexes (we're instructed that we should leave "indices" to the mathematicians and scientists) used as a narrative medium, and more. In short, everything we could really ask to know about the index, Dr. Duncan has anticipated and answered along with a fair bit I didn't even know that I wanted to know.

The book includes a number of illustrations as well as a cross referenced index (naturally) and full chapter notes and annotations. The chapter notes are likely worth the price of admission for anyone interested in the subject. I took notes during the read and harvested an impressive number of items which warranted further examination later. It's a niche book but will definitely appeal to readers interested in information science and bibliophilia. The author has clearly expended a prodigious amount of effort and he really does know his stuff.

The audiobook version has a run time of 8 hours 9 minutes and is capably narrated by Neil Gardner. Mr. Gardner has an "everyman" sort of slightly Southeast London accent (to my ear) and wouldn't raise an eyebrow as a bricklayer or lorry driver. I am sure that this was a completely intentional casting, and his voice brings a warmth and refreshingly accessible humour to the read. It's nice to listen to his voice which is emphatically not "posh" in this instance. That being said however, this is a VERY minutiae dense book. There are pages and pages and pages of figures and page numbers. It had to have been an absolutely daunting and gargantuan task to complete an audiobook version and it doesn't seem to have been a particularly practical exercise. For example, in the introduction, the author relates an acrimonious exchange between two 19th century historians which takes place in the index of one of the combatant's books and elucidates (in excruciating detail) how their educated expert opinions differ from one another's. The recitation takes the form of a long long list of specific examples with page numbers appended delineating the original author's opinion that his academic nemesis was a nincompoop. Again, the narrator was really good, but just the listing of page numbers and acerbic observations took more than 15 minutes to read aloud.

Five stars. This is well and deeply researched and engaging. (But audiobook readers might want to bring some extra endurance to the read).

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.