Title: The Evolution of the Book
Author: Frederick G. Kilgour
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: 192 pages, 9.2 x 0.9 x 6.3 inches, English
ISBN: 978-0-1951-1859-9
From the first chapter:
“In the last third of the twentieth century, the book in the shape of a long-familiar object composed of inked sheets folded, cut, and bound began to metamorphose into the book as a screen display on an electronic machine; the transformation, in materials, shape, and structure, of the device for carrying written and graphic information was more extreme than any since the original creations on clay and papyrus in the third millennium B.C. Through historical analysis of the societal needs that have invoked the transformations of the book, and the technologies that have shaped them, The Evolution of the Book aims to shed light on the present emergence of the electronic book.”