Books

Book

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The Gutenberg Bible, one of the first books to be printed using the printing press.

book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrusparchmentvellum, or paperbound together and protected by a cover.[1] The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex (plural, codices). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its immediate predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page.

As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and a still considerable, though not so extensive, investment of time to read. This sense of book has a restricted and an unrestricted sense. In the restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage that reflects the fact that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls, and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. So, for instance, each part of Aristotle‘s Physics is called a book. In the unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts.

The intellectual content in a physical book need not be a composition, nor even be called a book. Books can consist only of drawings, engravings, or photographs, or such things as crossword puzzles or cut-out dolls. In a physical book, the pages can be left blank or can feature an abstract set of lines as support for ongoing entries, e.g., an account book, an appointment book, an autograph book, a notebook, a diary, or a sketchbook. Some physical books are made with pages thick and sturdy enough to support other physical objects, like a scrapbook or photograph album. Books may be distributed in electronic form as e-books and other formats.

Although in ordinary academic parlance a monograph is understood to be a specialist academic work, rather than a reference work on a single scholarly subject, in library and information science monograph denotes more broadly any non-serial publication complete in one volume (book) or a finite number of volumes (even a novel like Proust’s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time), in contrast to serial publications like a magazinejournal, or newspaper. An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, “bookworm”. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore. Books are also sold elsewhere. Books can also be borrowed from librariesGoogle has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published.[2] In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the increased usage of e-books.

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book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrusparchmentvellum, or paperbound together and protected by a cover.[1] The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex (plural, codices). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its immediate predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page.

As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and a still considerable, though not so extensive, investment of time to read. This sense of book has a restricted and an unrestricted sense. In the restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage that reflects the fact that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls, and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. So, for instance, each part of Aristotle‘s Physics is called a book. In the unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts.

The intellectual content in a physical book need not be a composition, nor even be called a book. Books can consist only of drawings, engravings, or photographs, or such things as crossword puzzles or cut-out dolls. In a physical book, the pages can be left blank or can feature an abstract set of lines as support for ongoing entries, e.g., an account book, an appointment book, an autograph book, a notebook, a diary, or a sketchbook. Some physical books are made with pages thick and sturdy enough to support other physical objects, like a scrapbook or photograph album. Books may be distributed in electronic form as e-books and other formats.

Although in ordinary academic parlance a monograph is understood to be a specialist academic work, rather than a reference work on a single scholarly subject, in library and information science monograph denotes more broadly any non-serial publication complete in one volume (book) or a finite number of volumes (even a novel like Proust’s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time), in contrast to serial publications like a magazinejournal, or newspaper. An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, “bookworm”. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore. Books are also sold elsewhere. Books can also be borrowed from librariesGoogle has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the increased usage of e-books.

Contents
Etymology

The word book comes from Old English “bōc”, which in turn comes from the Germanic root “*bōk-“, cognate to “beech“.[4] Similarly, in Slavic languages (for example, RussianBulgarianMacedonian) “буква” (bukva—”letter”) is cognate with “beech”. In Russian, Serbian and Macedonian, the word “букварь” (bukvar’) or “буквар” (bukvar) refers specifically to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood.[5] Similarly, the Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant “block of wood”.

History

Main article: History of books

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Antiquity

Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the text of the poem Inanna and Ebih by the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known[6]

When writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, and bones, were used for writing; these are studied in epigraphy.

Tablet

Main articles: Clay tablet and Wax tabletSee also: Stylus

A tablet is a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. Clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus. They were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron AgeWax tablets were pieces of wood covered in a coating of wax thick enough to record the impressions of a stylus. They were the normal writing material in schools, in accounting, and for taking notes. They had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted, and reformed into a blank.

The custom of binding several wax tablets together (Roman pugillares) is a possible precursor of modern bound (codex) books.[7] The etymology of the word codex (block of wood) also suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets.[8]

Scroll

Main article: Scroll

Book of the Dead of Hunefer; c. 1275 BC; ink and pigments on papyrus; 45 × 90.5 cm; British Museum (London)

Scrolls can be made from papyrus, a thick paper-like material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant, then pounding the woven sheet with a hammer-like tool until it is flattened. Papyrus was used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty, although the first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC).[9] Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll. Tree bark such as lime and other materials were also used.[10]

According to Herodotus (History 5:58), the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th century BC. The Greek word for papyrus as writing material (biblion) and book (biblos) come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which papyrus was exported to Greece.[11] From Greek we also derive the word tome (Greek: τόμος), which originally meant a slice or piece and from there began to denote “a roll of papyrus”. Tomus was used by the Latins with exactly the same meaning as volumen (see also below the explanation by Isidore of Seville).

Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant form of book in the Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, Hebrew, and Macedonian cultures. The more modern codex book format form took over the Roman world by late antiquity, but the scroll format persisted much longer in Asia.

Codex

A Chinese bamboo book meets the modern definition of CodexMain article: Codex

Isidore of Seville (d. 636) explained the then-current relation between codex, book and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13): “A codex is composed of many books; a book is of one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks (codex) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches.” Modern usage differs.

A codex (in modern usage) is the first information repository that modern people would recognize as a “book”: leaves of uniform size bound in some manner along one edge, and typically held between two covers made of some more robust material. The first written mention of the codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the first century, where he praises its compactness. However, the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use.[12] This change happened gradually during the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex form of the book are several: the format is more economical, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it is portable, searchable, and easy to conceal. A book is much easier to read, to find a page that you want, and to flip through. A scroll is more awkward to use. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan and Judaic texts written on scrolls. In addition, some metal books were made, that required smaller pages of metal, instead of an impossibly long, unbending scroll of metal. A book can also be easily stored in more compact places, or side by side in a tight library or shelf space.

Manuscripts

Main article: Manuscript

Folio 14 recto of the 5th century Vergilius Romanus contains an author portrait of Virgil. Note the bookcase (capsa), reading stand and the text written without word spacing in rustic capitals.

The fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD saw the decline of the culture of ancient Rome. Papyrus became difficult to obtain due to lack of contact with Egypt, and parchment, which had been used for centuries, became the main writing material. Parchment is a material made from processed animal skin and used—mainly in the past—for writing on. Parchment is most commonly made of calfskin, sheepskin, or goatskin. It was historically used for writing documents, notes, or the pages of a book. Parchment is limed, scraped and dried under tension. It is not tanned, and is thus different from leather. This makes it more suitable for writing on, but leaves it very reactive to changes in relative humidity and makes it revert to rawhide if overly wet.

Monasteries carried on the Latin writing tradition in the Western Roman EmpireCassiodorus, in the monastery of Vivarium (established around 540), stressed the importance of copying texts.[13] St. Benedict of Nursia, in his Rule of Saint Benedict (completed around the middle of the 6th century) later also promoted reading.[14] The Rule of Saint Benedict (Ch. XLVIII), which set aside certain times for reading, greatly influenced the monastic culture of the Middle Ages and is one of the reasons why the clergy were the predominant readers of books. The tradition and style of the Roman Empire still dominated, but slowly the peculiar medieval book culture emerged.

The Codex Amiatinus anachronistically depicts the Biblical Ezra with the kind of books used in the 8th Century AD.

Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books expensive and comparatively rare. Smaller monasteries usually had only a few dozen books, medium-sized perhaps a few hundred. By the 9th century, larger collections held around 500 volumes and even at the end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and Paris library of the Sorbonne held only around 2,000 volumes.[15]

The scriptorium of the monastery was usually located over the chapter house. Artificial light was forbidden for fear it may damage the manuscripts. There were five types of scribes:

  • Calligraphers, who dealt in fine book production
  • Copyists, who dealt with basic production and correspondence
  • Correctors, who collated and compared a finished book with the manuscript from which it had been produced
  • Illuminators, who painted illustrations
  • Rubricators, who painted in the red letters

Burgundian author and scribe Jean Miélot, from his Miracles de Notre Dame, 15th century.

The bookmaking process was long and laborious. The parchment had to be prepared, then the unbound pages were planned and ruled with a blunt tool or lead, after which the text was written by the scribe, who usually left blank areas for illustration and rubrication. Finally, the book was bound by the bookbinder.[16]

Desk with chained books in the Malatestiana Library of CesenaItaly.

Different types of ink were known in antiquity, usually prepared from soot and gum, and later also from gall nuts and iron vitriol. This gave writing a brownish black color, but black or brown were not the only colors used. There are texts written in red or even gold, and different colors were used for illumination. For very luxurious manuscripts the whole parchment was colored purple, and the text was written on it with gold or silver (for example, Codex Argenteus).[17]

Irish monks introduced spacing between words in the 7th century. This facilitated reading, as these monks tended to be less familiar with Latin. However, the use of spaces between words did not become commonplace before the 12th century. It has been argued that the use of spacing between words shows the transition from semi-vocalized reading into silent reading.[18]

The first books used parchment or vellum (calfskin) for the pages. The book covers were made of wood and covered with leather. Because dried parchment tends to assume the form it had before processing, the books were fitted with clasps or straps. During the later Middle Ages, when public libraries appeared, up to the 18th century, books were often chained to a bookshelf or a desk to prevent theft. These chained books are called libri catenati.

At first, books were copied mostly in monasteries, one at a time. With the rise of universities in the 13th century, the Manuscript culture of the time led to an increase in the demand for books, and a new system for copying books appeared. The books were divided into unbound leaves (pecia), which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious material.[19]

Judaism has kept the art of the scribe alive up to the present. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah scroll placed in a synagogue must be written by hand on parchment and a printed book would not do, though the congregation may use printed prayer books and printed copies of the Scriptures are used for study outside the synagogue. A sofer “scribe” is a highly respected member of any observant Jewish community.

Middle East
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People of various religious (Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Muslims) and ethnic backgrounds (Syriac, Coptic, Persian, Arab etc.) in the Middle East also produced and bound books in the Islamic Golden Age (mid 8th century to 1258), developing advanced techniques in Islamic calligraphyminiatures and bookbinding. A number of cities in the medieval Islamic world had book production centers and book markets. Yaqubi (d. 897) says that in his time Baghdad had over a hundred booksellers.[20] Book shops were often situated around the town’s principal mosque[21] as in MarrakeshMorocco, that has a street named Kutubiyyin or book sellers in English and the famous Koutoubia Mosque is named so because of its location in this street.

The medieval Muslim world also used a method of reproducing reliable copies of a book in large quantities known as check reading, in contrast to the traditional method of a single scribe producing only a single copy of a single manuscript. In the check reading method, only “authors could authorize copies, and this was done in public sessions in which the copyist read the copy aloud in the presence of the author, who then certified it as accurate.”[22] With this check-reading system, “an author might produce a dozen or more copies from a single reading,” and with two or more readings, “more than one hundred copies of a single book could easily be produced.”[23] By using as writing material the relatively cheap paper instead of parchment or papyrus the Muslims, in the words of Pedersen “accomplished a feat of crucial significance not only to the history of the Islamic book, but also to the whole world of books”.[24]

Wood block printing

Bagh print, a traditional woodblock printing in Bagh Madhya PradeshIndia.

In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page. This method originated in China, in the Han dynasty (before 220 AD), as a method of printing on textiles and later paper, and was widely used throughout East Asia. The oldest dated book printed by this method is The Diamond Sutra (868 AD). The method (called woodcut when used in art) arrived in Europe in the early 14th century. Books (known as block-books), as well as playing-cards and religious pictures, began to be produced by this method. Creating an entire book was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page; and the wood blocks tended to crack, if stored for long. The monks or people who wrote them were paid highly.

Movable type and incunabula

A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses and clasps.Main articles: Movable type and Incunable

Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Son Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, printed in Korea, in 1377, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware c. 1045, but there are no known surviving examples of his printing. Around 1450, in what is commonly regarded as an independent invention, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce, and more widely available.

Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula. “A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in AD 330.”[25]

19th century to 21st centuries

Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 19th century. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour.[citation needed] Monotype and linotype typesetting machines were introduced in the late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once. There have been numerous improvements in the printing press. As well, the conditions for freedom of the press have been improved through the gradual relaxation of restrictive censorship laws. See also intellectual propertypublic domaincopyright. In mid-20th century, European book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year.

Throughout the 20th century, libraries have faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion. The advent of electronic publishing and the internet means that much new information is not printed in paper books, but is made available online through a digital library, on CD-ROM, in the form of e-books or other online media. An on-line book is an e-book that is available online through the internet. Though many books are produced digitally, most digital versions are not available to the public, and there is no decline in the rate of paper publishing.[26] There is an effort, however, to convert books that are in the public domain into a digital medium for unlimited redistribution and infinite availability. This effort is spearheaded by Project Gutenberg combined with Distributed Proofreaders. There have also been new developments in the process of publishing books. Technologies such as POD or “print on demand“, which make it possible to print as few as one book at a time, have made self-publishing (and vanity publishing) much easier and more affordable. On-demand publishing has allowed publishers, by avoiding the high costs of warehousing, to keep low-selling books in print rather than declaring them out of print.

Modern manufacturing

Main article: BookbindingSee also: Publishing

The spine of the book is an important aspect in book design, especially in the cover design. When the books are stacked up or stored in a shelf, the details on the spine is the only visible surface that contains the information about the book. In stores, it is the details on the spine that attract a buyer’s attention first.

The methods used for the printing and binding of books continued fundamentally unchanged from the 15th century into the early 20th century. While there was more mechanization, a book printer in 1900 had much in common with GutenbergGutenberg’s invention was the use of movable metal types, assembled into words, lines, and pages and then printed by letterpress to create multiple copies. Modern paper books are printed on papers designed specifically for printed books. Traditionally, book papers are off-white or low-white papers (easier to read), are opaque to minimise the show-through of text from one side of the page to the other and are (usually) made to tighter caliper or thickness specifications, particularly for case-bound books. Different paper qualities are used depending on the type of book: Machine finished coated paperswoodfree uncoated paperscoated fine papers and special fine papers are common paper grades.

Today, the majority of books are printed by offset lithography.[27] When a book is printed, the pages are laid out on the plate so that after the printed sheet is folded the pages will be in the correct sequence. Books tend to be manufactured nowadays in a few standard sizes. The sizes of books are usually specified as “trim size”: the size of the page after the sheet has been folded and trimmed. The standard sizes result from sheet sizes (therefore machine sizes) which became popular 200 or 300 years ago, and have come to dominate the industry. British conventions in this regard prevail throughout the English-speaking world, except for the USA. The European book manufacturing industry works to a completely different set of standards.

Processes
Layout

Parts of a modern case bound book

Modern bound books are organized according to a particular format called the book’s layout. Although there is great variation in layout, modern books tend to adhere to as set of rules with regard to what the parts of the layout are and what their content usually includes. A basic layout will include a front cover, a back cover and the book’s content which is called its body copy or content pages. The front cover often bears the book’s title (and subtitle, if any) and the name of its author or editor(s). The inside front cover page is usually left blank in both hardcover and paperback books. The next section, if present, is the book’s front matter, which includes all textual material after the front cover but not part of the book’s content such as a foreword, a dedication, a table of contents and publisher data such as the book’s edition or printing number and place of publication. Between the body copy and the back cover goes the end matter which would include any indices, sets of tables, diagrams, glossaries or lists of cited works (though an edited book with several authors usually places cited works at the end of each authored chapter). The inside back cover page, like that inside the front cover, is usually blank. The back cover is the usual place for the book’s ISBN and maybe a photograph of the author(s)/ editor(s), perhaps with a short introduction to them. Also here often appear plot summaries, barcodes and excerpted reviews of the book.[28]

Printing

Book covers
Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. fewer copies) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but most books are now printed on web presses, which are fed by a continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a shorter time. As the production line circulates, a complete “book” is collected together in one stack, next to another, and another web press carries out the folding itself, delivering bundles of signatures (sections) ready to go into the gathering line. Note that the pages of a book are printed two at a time, not as one complete book. Excess numbers are printed to make up for any spoilage due to make-readies or test pages to assure final print quality.

make-ready is the preparatory work carried out by the pressmen to get the printing press up to the required quality of impression. Included in make-ready is the time taken to mount the plate onto the machine, clean up any mess from the previous job, and get the press up to speed. As soon as the pressman decides that the printing is correct, all the make-ready sheets will be discarded, and the press will start making books. Similar make readies take place in the folding and binding areas, each involving spoilage of paper.

Binding

After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery. In the middle of last century there were still many trade binders – stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in binding alone. At that time, because of the dominance of letterpress printing, typesetting and printing took place in one location, and binding in a different factory. When type was all metal, a typical book’s worth of type would be bulky, fragile and heavy. The less it was moved in this condition the better: so printing would be carried out in the same location as the typesetting. Printed sheets on the other hand could easily be moved. Now, because of increasing computerization of preparing a book for the printer, the typesetting part of the job has flowed upstream, where it is done either by separately contracting companies working for the publisher, by the publishers themselves, or even by the authors. Mergers in the book manufacturing industry mean that it is now unusual to find a bindery which is not also involved in book printing (and vice versa).

If the book is a hardback its path through the bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback. Unsewn binding, is now increasingly common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by “Smyth sewing” using needles, “McCain sewing”, using drilled holes often used in schoolbook binding, or “notch binding”, where gashes about an inch long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each signature. The rest of the binding process is similar in all instances. Sewn and notch bound books can be bound as either hardbacks or paperbacks.

Finishing

Book pages

“Making cases” happens off-line and prior to the book’s arrival at the binding line. In the most basic case-making, two pieces of cardboard are placed onto a glued piece of cloth with a space between them into which is glued a thinner board cut to the width of the spine of the book. The overlapping edges of the cloth (about 5/8″ all round) are folded over the boards, and pressed down to adhere. After case-making the stack of cases will go to the foil stamping area for adding decorations and type.

Digital printing

Recent developments in book manufacturing include the development of digital printing. Book pages are printed, in much the same way as an office copier works, using toner rather than ink. Each book is printed in one pass, not as separate signatures. Digital printing has permitted the manufacture of much smaller quantities than offset, in part because of the absence of make readies and of spoilage. One might think of a web press as printing quantities over 2000, quantities from 250 to 2000 being printed on sheet-fed presses, and digital presses doing quantities below 250. These numbers are of course only approximate and will vary from supplier to supplier, and from book to book depending on its characteristics. Digital printing has opened up the possibility of print-on-demand, where no books are printed until after an order is received from a customer.

E-book

Main article: e-book

A screen of a Kindle e-reader.

In the 2000s, due to the rise in availability of affordable handheld computing devices, the opportunity to share texts through electronic means became an appealing option for media publishers.[29] Thus, the “e-book” was made. The term e-book is a contraction of “electronic book”; it refers to a book-length publication in digital form.[30] An e-book is usually made available through the internet, but also on CD-ROM and other forms. E-Books may be read either via a computing device with an LED display such as a traditional computer, a smartphone or a tablet computer; or by means of a portable e-ink display device known as an e-book reader, such as the Sony ReaderBarnes & Noble NookKobo eReader, or the Amazon Kindle. E-book readers attempt to mimic the experience of reading a print book by using this technology, since the displays on e-book readers are much less reflective.

Design

Main article: Book design

Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components of a book into a coherent whole. In the words of Jan Tschichold, book design “though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed over centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought back to life and applied.” Richard Hendel describes book design as “an arcane subject” and refers to the need for a context to understand what that means. Many different creators can contribute to book design, including graphic designersartists and editors.

Sizes

Main article: Book size

Real-size facsimile of Codex Gigas

A page from the world’s largest book. Each page is three and a half feet wide, five feet tall and a little over five inches thick

The size of a modern book is based on the printing area of a common flatbed press. The pages of type were arranged and clamped in a frame, so that when printed on a sheet of paper the full size of the press, the pages would be right side up and in order when the sheet was folded, and the folded edges trimmed.

The most common book sizes are:

  • Quarto (4to): the sheet of paper is folded twice, forming four leaves (eight pages) approximately 11–13 inches (c. 30 cm) tall
  • Octavo (8vo): the most common size for current hardcover books. The sheet is folded three times into eight leaves (16 pages) up to 9 ¾” (c. 23 cm) tall.
  • DuoDecimo (12mo): a size between 8vo and 16mo, up to 7 ¾” (c. 18 cm) tall
  • Sextodecimo (16mo): the sheet is folded four times, forming 16 leaves (32 pages) up to 6 ¾” (c. 15 cm) tall

Sizes smaller than 16mo are:

  • 24mo: up to 5 ¾” (c. 13 cm) tall.
  • 32mo: up to 5″ (c. 12 cm) tall.
  • 48mo: up to 4″ (c. 10 cm) tall.
  • 64mo: up to 3″ (c. 8 cm) tall.

Small books can be called booklets.

Sizes larger than quarto are:

  • Folio: up to 15″ (c. 38 cm) tall.
  • Elephant Folio: up to 23″ (c. 58 cm) tall.
  • Atlas Folio: up to 25″ (c. 63 cm) tall.
  • Double Elephant Folio: up to 50″ (c. 127 cm) tall.

The largest extant medieval manuscript in the world is Codex Gigas 92 × 50 × 22 cm. The world’s largest book is made of stone and is in Kuthodaw Pagoda (Burma).

Types
By content

Novels in a bookstore

A common separation by content are fiction and non-fiction books. This simple separation can be found in most collectionslibraries, and bookstores.

Fiction

Many of the books published today are fiction, meaning that they are in-part or completely untrue. Historically, paper production was considered too expensive to be used for entertainment. An increase in global literacy and print technology led to the increased publication of books for the purpose of entertainment, and allegorical social commentary. Most fiction is additionally categorized by genre.

The novel is the most common form of fiction book. Novels are stories that typically feature a plotsettingthemes and characters. Stories and narrative are not restricted to any topic; a novel can be whimsical, serious or controversial. The novel has had a tremendous impact on entertainment and publishing markets.[31] A novella is a term sometimes used for fiction prose typically between 17,500 and 40,000 words, and a novelette between 7,500 and 17,500. A short story may be any length up to 10,000 words, but these word lengths vary.

Comic books or graphic novels are books in which the story is illustrated. The characters and narrators use speech or thought bubbles to express verbal language.

Non-fiction

A page from a dictionary

In a library, a reference book is a general type of non-fiction book which provides information as opposed to telling a story, essay, commentary, or otherwise supporting a point of view. An almanac is a very general reference book, usually one-volume, with lists of data and information on many topics. An encyclopedia is a book or set of books designed to have more in-depth articles on many topics. A book listing words, their etymology, meanings, and other information is called a dictionary. A book which is a collection of maps is an atlas. A more specific reference book with tables or lists of data and information about a certain topic, often intended for professional use, is often called a handbook. Books which try to list references and abstracts in a certain broad area may be called an index, such as Engineering Index, or abstracts such as chemical abstracts and biological abstracts.

An atlas

Books with technical information on how to do something or how to use some equipment are called instruction manuals. Other popular how-to books include cookbooks and home improvement books.

Students typically store and carry textbooks and schoolbooks for study purposes. Elementary school pupils often use workbooks, which are published with spaces or blanks to be filled by them for study or homework. In US higher education, it is common for a student to take an exam using a blue book.

A page from a notebook used as hand written diary

There is a large set of books that are made only to write private ideas, notes, and accounts. These books are rarely published and are typically destroyed or remain private. Notebooks are blank papers to be written in by the user. Students and writers commonly use them for taking notes. Scientists and other researchers use lab notebooks to record their notes. They often feature spiral coil bindings at the edge so that pages may easily be torn out.

telephone directory, with business and residence listings.

Address booksphone books, and calendar/appointment books are commonly used on a daily basis for recording appointments, meetings and personal contact information.

Books for recording periodic entries by the user, such as daily information about a journey, are called logbooks or simply logs. A similar book for writing the owner’s daily private personal events, information, and ideas is called a diary or personal journal.

Businesses use accounting books such as journals and ledgers to record financial data in a practice called bookkeeping.

Other types

There are several other types of books which are not commonly found under this system. Albums are books for holding a group of items belonging to a particular theme, such as a set of photographs, card collections, and memorabilia. One common example is stamp albums, which are used by many hobbyists to protect and organize their collections of postage stamps. Such albums are often made using removable plastic pages held inside in a ringed binder or other similar holder. Picture books are books for children with pictures on every page and less text (or even no text).

Hymnals are books with collections of musical hymns that can typically be found in churchesPrayerbooks or missals are books that contain written prayers and are commonly carried by monksnuns, and other devoted followers or clergy.

Decodable readers and leveled books

A leveled book collection is a set of books organized in levels of difficulty from the easy books appropriate for an emergent reader to longer more complex books adequate for advanced readers. Decodable readers or books are a specialized type of leveled books that use decodable text only including controlled lists of words, sentences and stories consistent with the letters and phonics that have been taught to the emergent reader. New sounds and letters are added to higher level decodable books, as the level of instruction progresses, allowing for higher levels of accuracy, comprehension and fluency.

By physical format

Hardcover books

Paperback books

Hardcover books have a stiff binding. Paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable. An alternative to paperback is the glossy cover, otherwise known as a dust cover, found on magazines, and comic books. Spiral-bound books are bound by spirals made of metal or plastic. Examples of spiral-bound books include teachers’ manuals and puzzle books (crosswordssudoku).

Publishing is a process for producing pre-printed books, magazines, and newspapers for the reader/user to buy.

Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-publication copies known as galleys or ‘bound proofs’ for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale.

Libraries

Main article: Library

Celsus Library was built in 135 AD and could house around 12,000 scrolls.

Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In the ancient world, the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries could have been either private or public, i.e. for people who were interested in using them. The difference from a modern public library lies in the fact that they were usually not funded from public sources. It is estimated that in the city of Rome at the end of the 3rd century there were around 30 public libraries. Public libraries also existed in other cities of the ancient Mediterranean region (for example, Library of Alexandria).[32] Later, in the Middle Ages, monasteries and universities had also libraries that could be accessible to general public. Typically not the whole collection was available to public, the books could not be borrowed and often were chained to reading stands to prevent theft.

The beginning of modern public library begins around 15th century when individuals started to donate books to towns.[33] The growth of a public library system in the United States started in the late 19th century and was much helped by donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: The poor or the middle class had to access most books through a public library or by other means while the rich could afford to have a private library built in their homes. In the United States the Boston Public Library 1852 Report of the Trustees established the justification for the public library as a tax-supported institution intended to extend educational opportunity and provide for general culture.

The advent of paperback books in the 20th century led to an explosion of popular publishing. Paperback books made owning books affordable for many people. Paperback books often included works from genres that had previously been published mostly in pulp magazines. As a result of the low cost of such books and the spread of bookstores filled with them (in addition to the creation of a smaller market of extremely cheap used paperbacks) owning a private library ceased to be a status symbol for the rich.

In library and booksellers’ catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as “Crown 8vo” to indicate the paper size from which the book is made.

When rows of books are lined on a book holder, bookends are sometimes needed to keep them from slanting.

Identification and classification

ISBN with barcode

During the 20th century, librarians were concerned about keeping track of the many books being added yearly to the Gutenberg Galaxy. Through a global society called the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), they devised a series of tools including the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). Each book is specified by an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every edition of every book produced by participating publishers, worldwide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. An ISBN has four parts: the first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a check digit, and can take values from 0–9 and X (10). The EAN Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland, and calculating a new check digit.

Commercial publishers in industrialized countries generally assign ISBNs to their books, so buyers may presume that the ISBN is part of a total international system, with no exceptions. However, many government publishers, in industrial as well as developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system, and publish books which do not have ISBNs. A large or public collection requires a catalogue. Codes called “call numbers” relate the books to the catalogue, and determine their locations on the shelves. Call numbers are based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, and inside. Institutional or national standards, such as ANSI/NISO Z39.41 – 1997, establish the correct way to place information (such as the title, or the name of the author) on book spines, and on “shelvable” book-like objects, such as containers for DVDsvideo tapes and software.

Books on library shelves and call numbers visible on the spines

One of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. Another widely known system is the Library of Congress Classification system. Both systems are biased towards subjects which were well represented in US libraries when they were developed, and hence have problems handling new subjects, such as computing, or subjects relating to other cultures.[citation needed] Information about books and authors can be stored in databases like online general-interest book databasesMetadata, which means “data about data” is information about a book. Metadata about a book may include its title, ISBN or other classification number (see above), the names of contributors (author, editor, illustrator) and publisher, its date and size, the language of the text, its subject matter, etc.

Classification systems
Uses

Aside from the primary purpose of reading them, books are also used for other ends:

  • A book can be an artistic artifact, a piece of art; this is sometimes known as an artists’ book.
  • A book may be evaluated by a reader or professional writer to create a book review.
  • A book may be read by a group of people to use as a spark for social or academic discussion, as in a book club.
  • A book may be studied by students as the subject of a writing and analysis exercise in the form of a book report.
  • Books are sometimes used for their exterior appearance to decorate a room, such as a study.
Book marketing

Once the book is published, it is put on the market by the distributors and the bookstores. Meanwhile, his promotion comes from various media reports. Book marketing is governed by the law in many states.

Other forms of secondary spread

In recent years, the book had a second life in the form of reading aloud. This is called public readings of published works, with the assistance of professional readers (often known actors) and in close collaboration with writers, publishers, booksellers, librarians, leaders of the literary world and artists.

Many individual or collective practices exist to increase the number of readers of a book. Among them:

  • abandonment of books in public places, coupled or not with the use of the Internet, known as the bookcrossing;
  • provision of free books in third places like bars or cafes;
  • itinerant or temporary libraries;
  • free public libraries in the area.
Evolution of the book industry

This form of the book chain has hardly changed since the eighteenth century, and has not always been this way. Thus, the author has asserted gradually with time, and the copyright dates only from the nineteenth century. For many centuries, especially before the invention of printing, each freely copied out books that passed through his hands, adding if necessary his own comments. Similarly, bookseller and publisher jobs have emerged with the invention of printing, which made the book an industrial product, requiring structures of production and marketing.

The invention of the Internet, e-readers, tablets, and projects like Wikipedia and Gutenberg, are likely to strongly change the book industry in the years to come.

Paper and conservation

Main article: Conservation and restoration of books, manuscripts, documents and ephemera

Halfbound book with leather and marbled paper.

Paper was first made in China as early as 200 BC, and reached Europe through Muslim territories. At first made of rags, the industrial revolution changed paper-making practices, allowing for paper to be made out of wood pulp. Papermaking in Europe began in the 11th century, although vellum was also common there as page material up until the beginning of the 16th century, vellum being the more expensive and durable option. Printers or publishers would often issue the same publication on both materials, to cater to more than one market.

Paper made from wood pulp became popular in the early 20th century, because it was cheaper than linen or abaca cloth-based papers. Pulp-based paper made books less expensive to the general public. This paved the way for huge leaps in the rate of literacy in industrialised nations, and enabled the spread of information during the Second Industrial Revolution.

Pulp paper, however, contains acid which eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers, which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Books printed between 1850 and 1950 are primarily at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkaline paper. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidification of their older collections in order to prevent decay.

Stability of the climate is critical to the long-term preservation of paper and book material.[35] Good air circulation is important to keep fluctuation in climate stable. The HVAC system should be up to date and functioning efficiently. Light is detrimental to collections. Therefore, care should be given to the collections by implementing light control. General housekeeping issues can be addressed, including pest control. In addition to these helpful solutions, a library must also make an effort to be prepared if a disaster occurs, one that they cannot control. Time and effort should be given to create a concise and effective disaster plan to counteract any damage incurred through “acts of God” therefore an emergency management plan should be in place.

++++++++++++

Great booksFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Great books are books that constitute an essential foundation in the literature of Western culture. Specified sets of great books typically range from 100 to 150, though they differ according to purpose and context. For instance, some lists are built to be read by undergraduates in a college semester system (130 books, Torrey Honors Institute), some are compiled to be sold as a single set of volumes (500 booksMortimer Adler), while some lists aim at a thorough literary criticism (2,400 books, Harold Bloom).

Concept

The great books are those that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture (the Western canon is a similar but broader designation); derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books. Mortimer Adler lists three criteria for including a book on the list:

  • the book has contemporary significance; that is, it has relevance to the problems and issues of our times;
  • the book is inexhaustible; it can be read again and again with benefit; “This is an exacting criterion, an ideal that is fully attained by only a small number of the 511 works that we selected. It is approximated in varying degrees by the rest.”[3]
  • the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.[4]
Universities

Over 100 institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, and Europe maintain some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students.[15] Among these are:

Controversy

In contemporary scholarship, the Great Books curriculum was drawn into the popular debate about multiculturalism, traditional education, the “culture war,” and the role of the intellectual in American life. Much of this debate centered on reactions to the publication of The Closing of the American Mind in 1987 by Allan Bloom.

Series

Main article: Great Books of the Western World

The Great Books of the Western World is a hardcover 60-volume collection (originally 54 volumes) of the books on the Great Books list (about 517 individual works). Many of the books in the collection were translated into English for the first time.[citation needed] A prominent feature of the collection is a two-volume Syntopicon that includes essays written by Mortimer Adler on 102 “great ideas.” Following each essay is an extensive outline of the idea with page references to relevant passages throughout the collection. Familiar to many Americans, the collection is available from Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., which owns the copyright.

Shortly after Adler retired from the Great Books Foundation in 1989, a second edition (1990) of the Great Books of the Western World was published; it included more Hispanic and female authors and, for the first time, works by black authors.[63] During his tenure as president of the Foundation, Adler had resisted such additions.[64]

We did not base our selections on an author’s nationality, religion, politics, or field of study; nor on an author’s race or gender. Great books were not chosen to make up quotas of any kind; there was no “affirmative action” in the process … we chose the Great books on the basis of their relevance to at least 25 of the 102 great ideas. Many of the Great books are relevant to a much larger number of the 102 great ideas, as many as 75 or more great ideas, a few to all 102 great ideas. In sharp contrast are the good books that are relevant to less than 10 or even as few as 4 or 5 great ideas. We placed such books in the lists of Recommended Readings to be found in the last section in each of the 102 chapters of the “Syntopicon”. Here readers will find many twentieth-century female authors, black authors, and Latin American authors whose works we recommended but did not include in the second edition of the great books.

In the course of history … new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation.

The following is an example list, in chronological order, compiled from How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (1940), and How to Read a Book, 2nd ed. by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (1972):

Ancient (before AD 500) :

  1. Homer – IliadOdyssey
  2. The Old Testament
  3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
  4. Sophocles – Tragedies
  5. Herodotus – Histories
  6. Euripides – Tragedies
  7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
  8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
  9. Aristophanes – Comedies
  10. Plato – Dialogues
  11. Aristotle – Works
  12. Epicurus – “Letter to Herodotus”; “Letter to Menoecus”
  13. Euclid – Elements
  14. Archimedes – Works
  15. Apollonius – Conics
  16. Cicero – Works (esp. OrationsOn FriendshipOn Old AgeRepublicLawsTusculan DisputationsOffices)
  17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
  18. Virgil – Works (esp. Aeneid)
  19. Horace – Works (esp. Odes and EpodesThe Art of Poetry)
  20. Livy – History of Rome
  21. Ovid – Works (esp. Metamorphoses)
  22. Quintilian – Institutes of Oratory
  23. Plutarch – Parallel LivesMoralia
  24. Tacitus – HistoriesAnnalsAgricolaGermaniaDialogus de oratoribus (Dialogue on Oratory)
  25. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic
  26. Epictetus – Discourses; Enchiridion
  27. Ptolemy – Almagest
  28. Lucian – Works (esp. The Way to Write HistoryThe True HistoryThe Sale of CreedsAlexander the Oracle MongerCharonThe Sale of LivesThe FishermanDialogue of the GodsDialogues of the Sea-GodsDialogues of the Dead)
  29. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
  30. Galen – On the Natural Faculties
  31. The New Testament
  32. Plotinus – The Enneads
  33. St. Augustine – “On the Teacher”; ConfessionsCity of GodOn Christian Doctrine

Medieval (AD 500—1450) :

  1. The Volsungs Saga or Nibelungenlied
  2. The Song of Roland
  3. The Saga of Burnt Njál
  4. Maimonides – The Guide for the Perplexed
  5. St. Thomas Aquinas – Of Being and EssenceSumma Contra GentilesOf the Governance of RulersSumma Theologica
  6. Dante Alighieri – The New Life (La Vita Nuova); “On Monarchy”; Divine Comedy
  7. Giovanni Boccaccio – The Decameron
  8. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and CriseydeThe Canterbury Tales
  9. Thomas à Kempis – The Imitation of Christ

Modern (after AD 1450) :

  1. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
  2. Niccolò Machiavelli – The PrinceDiscourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
  3. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of FollyColloquies
  4. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
  5. Thomas More – Utopia
  6. Martin Luther – Table TalkThree Treatises
  7. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel
  8. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
  9. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
  10. William Gilbert – On the Lodestone and Magnetic Bodies
  11. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
  12. Edmund Spenser – ProthalamionThe Faerie Queene
  13. Francis Bacon – EssaysThe Advancement of LearningNovum OrganumNew Atlantis
  14. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays
  15. Galileo Galilei – Starry MessengerTwo New Sciences
  16. Johannes Kepler – The Epitome of Copernican AstronomyHarmonices Mundi
  17. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in AnimalsOn the Circulation of the BloodGeneration of Animals
  18. Grotius – The Law of War and Peace
  19. Thomas Hobbes – LeviathanElements of Philosophy
  20. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the MindDiscourse on the MethodGeometryMeditations on First PhilosophyPrinciples of PhilosophyThe Passions of the Soul
  21. Corneille – Tragedies (esp. The Cid, Cinna)
  22. John Milton – Works (esp. the minor poems; AreopagiticaParadise LostSamson Agonistes)
  23. Molière – Comedies (esp. The MiserThe School for WivesThe MisanthropeThe Doctor in Spite of HimselfTartuffeThe Tradesman Turned GentlemanThe Imaginary InvalidThe Affected Ladies)
  24. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial LettersPensées; Scientific Treatises
  25. John Bunyan – The Pilgrim’s Progress
  26. Boyle – The Sceptical Chymist
  27. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light
  28. Benedict de Spinoza – Political TreatisesEthics
  29. John Locke – A Letter Concerning TolerationOf Civil GovernmentAn Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingSome Thoughts Concerning Education
  30. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies (esp. AndromachePhaedraAthalie (Athaliah))
  31. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural PhilosophyOpticks
  32. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on MetaphysicsNew Essays on Human UnderstandingMonadology
  33. Daniel Defoe – Robinson CrusoeMoll Flanders
  34. Jonathan Swift – The Battle of the BooksA Tale of a TubA Journal to StellaGulliver’s TravelsA Modest Proposal
  35. William Congreve – The Way of the World
  36. George Berkeley – A New Theory of VisionA Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
  37. Alexander Pope – An Essay on CriticismThe Rape of the LockAn Essay on Man
  38. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian LettersThe Spirit of the Laws
  39. Voltaire – Letters on the EnglishCandidePhilosophical Dictionary
  40. Henry Fielding – Joseph AndrewsTom Jones
  41. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human WishesDictionaryRasselasLives of the Poets
  42. David Hume – A Treatise of Human NatureEssays Moral and PoliticalAn Enquiry Concerning Human UnderstandingHistory of England
  43. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Discourse on InequalityOn Political EconomyEmile: or, On EducationThe Social ContractConfessions
  44. Laurence Sterne – Tristram ShandyA Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
  45. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral SentimentsThe Wealth of Nations
  46. William Blackstone – Commentaries on the Laws of England
  47. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure ReasonGroundwork of the Metaphysic of MoralsCritique of Practical ReasonProlegomena to Any Future Metaphysics; The Science of Right; Critique of JudgmentPerpetual Peace
  48. Edward Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireAutobiography
  49. James Boswell – JournalThe Life of Samuel Johnson
  50. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
  51. Alexander HamiltonJohn Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers (together with the Articles of ConfederationUnited States Constitution and United States Declaration of Independence)
  52. Jeremy Bentham – Comment on the CommentariesIntroduction to the Principles of Morals and LegislationTheory of Fictions
  53. Johann Wolfgang Goethe – FaustPoetry and Truth
  54. Thomas Robert Malthus – An Essay on the Principle of Population
  55. John Dalton – A New System of Chemical Philosophy
  56. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat
  57. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – The Phenomenology of SpiritScience of LogicElements of the Philosophy of RightLectures on the Philosophy of History
  58. William Wordsworth – Poems (esp. Lyrical Ballads; Lucy poems; sonnets; The Prelude)
  59. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems (esp. Kubla KhanThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner ); Biographia Literaria
  60. David Ricardo – On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
  61. Jane Austen – Pride and PrejudiceEmma
  62. Carl von Clausewitz – On War
  63. Stendhal – The Red and the BlackThe Charterhouse of ParmaOn Love
  64. François Guizot – History of Civilization in France
  65. Lord Byron – Don Juan
  66. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism
  67. Michael Faraday – The Chemical History of a CandleExperimental Researches in Electricity
  68. Nikolai Lobachevsky – Geometrical Researches on the Theory of Parallels
  69. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology
  70. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy
  71. Honoré Balzac – Works (esp. Le Père GoriotLe Cousin PonsEugénie GrandetCousin BetteCésar Birotteau)
  72. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative MenEssays; Journal
  73. Victor Hugo – Les Misérables
  74. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
  75. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
  76. John Stuart Mill – A System of LogicPrinciples of Political EconomyOn LibertyConsiderations on Representative GovernmentUtilitarianismThe Subjection of WomenAutobiography
  77. Charles Darwin – On the Origin of SpeciesThe Descent of ManAutobiography
  78. William Makepeace Thackeray – Works (esp. Vanity FairThe History of Henry EsmondThe VirginiansPendennis)
  79. Charles Dickens – Works (esp. Pickwick PapersOur Mutual FriendDavid CopperfieldDombey and SonOliver TwistA Tale of Two CitiesHard Times)
  80. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
  81. George Boole – The Laws of Thought
  82. Henry David Thoreau – Civil DisobedienceWalden
  83. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – Das Kapital (Capital); The Communist Manifesto
  84. George Eliot – Adam BedeMiddlemarch
  85. Herman Melville – TypeeMoby-DickBilly Budd
  86. Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and PunishmentThe IdiotThe Brothers Karamazov
  87. Gustave Flaubert – Madame BovaryThree Stories
  88. Henry Thomas Buckle – A History of Civilization in England
  89. Francis Galton – Inquiries into Human Faculties and Its Development
  90. Bernhard Riemann – The Hypotheses of Geometry
  91. Henrik Ibsen – Plays (esp. Peer GyntBrandHedda GablerEmperor and GalileanA Doll’s HouseThe Wild DuckThe Master Builder)
  92. Leo Tolstoy – War and PeaceAnna Karenina; “What Is Art?“; Twenty-Three Tales
  93. Richard Dedekind – Theory of Numbers
  94. Wilhelm Wundt – Physiological PsychologyOutline of Psychology
  95. Mark Twain – The Innocents AbroadAdventures of Huckleberry FinnA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s CourtThe Mysterious Stranger
  96. Henry Adams – History of the United StatesMont-Saint-Michel and ChartresThe Education of Henry AdamsDegradation of Democratic Dogma
  97. Charles Peirce – Chance, Love, and LogicCollected Papers
  98. William Sumner – Folkways
  99. Oliver Wendell Holmes – The Common LawCollected Legal Papers
  100. William James – The Principles of PsychologyThe Varieties of Religious ExperiencePragmatismA Pluralistic UniverseEssays in Radical Empiricism
  101. Henry James – The AmericanThe Ambassadors
  102. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke ZarathustraBeyond Good and EvilOn the Genealogy of MoralityThe Will to PowerTwilight of the IdolsThe Antichrist
  103. Georg Cantor – Transfinite Numbers
  104. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and HypothesisScience and MethodThe Foundations of Science
  105. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of DreamsThree Essays on the Theory of SexualityIntroduction to PsychoanalysisBeyond the Pleasure PrincipleGroup Psychology and the Analysis of the EgoThe Ego and the IdCivilization and Its DiscontentsNew Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
  106. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
  107. Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum TheoryWhere Is Science Going?Scientific Autobiography
  108. Henri Bergson – Time and Free WillMatter and MemoryCreative EvolutionThe Two Sources of Morality and Religion
  109. John Dewey – How We ThinkDemocracy and EducationExperience and NatureThe Quest for CertaintyLogic – The Theory of Inquiry
  110. Alfred North Whitehead – A Treatise on Universal AlgebraAn Introduction to MathematicsScience and the Modern WorldProcess and RealityThe Aims of Education and Other EssaysAdventures of Ideas
  111. George Santayana – The Life of ReasonScepticism and Animal FaithThe Realms of Being (which discusses the Realms of Essence, Matter and Truth); Persons and Places
  112. Vladimir Lenin – ImperialismThe State and Revolution
  113. Marcel Proust – In Search of Lost Time (formerly translated as Remembrance of Things Past)
  114. Bertrand Russell – Principles of MathematicsThe Problems of PhilosophyPrincipia MathematicaThe Analysis of MindAn Inquiry into Meaning and TruthHuman Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
  115. Thomas Mann – The Magic MountainJoseph and His Brothers
  116. Albert Einstein – The Theory of RelativitySidelights on RelativityThe Meaning of RelativityOn the Method of Theoretical PhysicsThe Evolution of Physics
  117. James Joyce – “The Dead” in DublinersA Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManUlysses
  118. Jacques Maritain – Art and ScholasticismThe Degrees of KnowledgeFreedom and the Modern WorldA Preface to MetaphysicsThe Rights of Man and Natural LawTrue Humanism
  119. Franz Kafka – The TrialThe Castle
  120. Arnold J. Toynbee – A Study of HistoryCivilization on Trial
  121. Jean-Paul Sartre – NauseaNo ExitBeing and Nothingness
  122. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – The First CircleCancer Ward

The original edition of How to Read a Book contained a separate “contemporary list” because “Here one’s judgment must be tentative”[66] All but the following authors were incorporated into the single list of the revised edition:

  1. Ivan Pavlov – Conditioned Reflexes
  2. Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of the Leisure ClassThe Higher Learning in AmericaThe Place of Science in Modern CivilizationVested Interests and the State of Industrial ArtsAbsentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times
  3. Franz Boas – The Mind of Primitive ManAnthropology and Modern Life
  4. Leon Trotsky – The History of the Russian Revolution
Television

Main article: The Learning Channel’s Great Books

In 1954 Mortimer Adler hosted a live weekly television series in San Francisco, comprising 52 half-hour programs, entitled The Great Ideas. These programs were produced by the Institute for Philosophical Research and were carried as a public service by the American Broadcasting Company, presented by National Educational Television (NET), the precursor to what is now PBS. Adler bequeathed these films to the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, where they are available for purchase.[67]

In 1993 and 1994, The Learning Channel created a series of one-hour programs discussing many of the Great Books of history and their impact on the world. It was narrated by Donald Sutherland and Morgan Freeman, amongst others.

+++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++

Literature

Liji2 no bg.png

Literature, most generically, is any body of written works. More restrictively, literature refers to writing considered to be an art form or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage.

Its Latin root literatura/litteratura (derived itself from litteraletter or handwriting) was used to refer to all written accounts. The concept has changed meaning over time to include texts that are spoken or sung (oral literature), and non-written verbal art forms. Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature.

Literature is classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and whether it is poetry or prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novelshort story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

Literature
Major forms
NovelPoemDramaShort storyNovella
Genres
AdventureComedyDramaEpicEroticNonsenseLyricMythopoeiaRomanceSatireSpeculative fictionTragedyTragicomedy
Media
PerformanceplayBook
Techniques
ProsePoetry
History and lists
HistorymodernOutlineGlossary of termsBooksWritersLiterary awardspoetry
Discussion
CriticismTheory (critical theory)SociologyMagazines

++++++


Sculpture in Berlin depicting a stack of books on which are inscribed the names of great German writers.

=====================================

Natural Health Food books,
Organic, fresh, raw, local fresh food books

Raw Foods

Sprouting

Gardening Indoor and Outdoor

+++++++++++++

Health foods books

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreamsby Deepak Chopra  | Nov 9, 1994Hardcover$16.00  Kindle $9.99+++++++++++++++

Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being

Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Beingby Rudolph E. Tanzi Ph.D. and Deepak Chopra M.D. | Oct 22, 2013  $15.99    Kindle$5.99 +++++++++++++++++++

Breathing: The Master Key to Self Healing

Breathing: The Master Key to Self Healingby Andrew Weil MD and Sounds True Audible Audiobook$13.27Free with Audible trial 

The Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Action Plans: 4-Week Meal Plans to Heal the Immune System and Restore Overall Health
The Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Action Plans: 4-Week Meal Plans to Heal the Immune System and Restore Overall Health

by Dorothy Calimeris and Sondi Bruner  | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLCKindle Edition  $9.99

Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health
Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health

by Andrew Weil, MD | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLCKindle Edition  $17.99

Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Revised Edition
Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Revised Edition

by Andrew Weil Md | Sold by: Random House LLC $17.00

Fast Food, Good Food: More Than 150 Quick and Easy Ways to Put Healthy, Delicious Food on the Table
Fast Food, Good Food: More Than 150 Quick and Easy Ways to Put Healthy, Delicious Food on the Table

by Andrew Weil | Sold by: Hachette Book Group$30.00

Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself
Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body’s Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself

by Andrew Weil, MD | Sold by: Random House LLCKindle Edition  $7.99

Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being
Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being

by Andrew Weil, MD | Sold by: Random House LLCKindle Edition$16.95

Spontaneous Happiness
Spontaneous Happiness

by Andrew Weil, MD Kindle Edition$9.99

Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Food, Diet and Nutrition
Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Food, Diet and Nutrition

by Andrew Weil Md | Sold by: Random House LLCKindle Edition$9.99

Mind Over Meds: Know When Drugs Are Necessary, When Alternatives Are Better and When to Let Your Body Heal on Its Own
Mind Over Meds: Know When Drugs Are Necessary, When Alternatives Are Better and When to Let Your Body Heal on Its Own

by Andrew Weil | Sold by: Hachette Book GroupKindle Edition$11.99 +++++++++++++

The Fully Raw Diet: 21 Days to Better Health, with Meal and Exercise Plans, Tips, and 75 Recipes
The Fully Raw Diet: 21 Days to Better Health, with Meal and Exercise Plans, Tips, and 75 Recipes

by Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram  | Jan 5, 2016Paperback$25.9Kindle  Free with Kindle Unlimited membership Or $11.99 to buy +++++++++++ 

Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People, Revised Edition
Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People, Revised Edition

by Jennifer Cornbleet  | Jul 25, 2012 Paperback   $19.95  Kindle  $9.99++++++++++++ 

Raw Food Art: Four Seasons of Plant-Powered Goodness
Raw Food Art: Four Seasons of Plant-Powered Goodness

by Aleksandra Winters and Bill Winters | Mar 29, 2016Paperback  $29.99 ++++++++ 

Living Foods for Optimum Health : Staying Healthy in an Unhealthy World Paperback – August 19, 1998
Paperback $14.99

++++++++++++

Hippocrates LifeForce: Superior Health and LongevityNov 1, 2007by Brian Clement  Hardcover  $30.47Kindle Edition   $9.99  

Food Is Medicine: The Scientific Evidence – Volume OneJan 21, 2014Brian Clement Hardcover $26.72byKindle Edition  $9.99 +++++++++++ 

Eat for Life: The Breakthrough Nutrient-Rich Program for Longevity, Disease Reversal, and Sustained Weight LossMar 3, 2020

by Joel Fuhrman  Kindle Edition $14.99Hardcover$28.99    

Eat to Live Quick and Easy Cookbook: 131 Delicious Recipes for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, Reversing Disease, and Lifelong HealthMay 2, 2017

by Joel FuhrmanKindle Edition$12.99  Paperback$25.99  

The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse DiabetesDec 26, 2012

by Joel Fuhrman    $24.99

Eat to Live Cookbook: 200 Delicious Nutrient-Rich Recipes for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, Reversing Disease, and Lifelong HealthOct 8, 2013

by Joel FuhrmanKindle Edition  $14.99 paperback $20.08 

The End of Heart Disease: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Heart DiseaseApr 5, 2016

by Joel FuhrmanKindle Edition  $10.99Hardcover $28.99  +++++++++++++++  

There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program
There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program

by Gabriel Cousens  | Jan 8, 2008Paperback

Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine
Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine

by Gabriel Cousens M.D., Tree of Life Cafe Chefs,  | Aug 22, 2003     Paperback  $30.00  Kindle    $30.00 +++++++++++++++++  

Conscious Eating
Conscious Eating

by Gabriel Cousens M.D. | Apr 11, 2000 $35.00  Kindle  $19.99

Spiritual Nutrition: Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini
Spiritual Nutrition: Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini

by Gabriel Cousens M.D. | Mar 11, 2005Paperback    $30.00   Kindle $19.99  +++++++++++ 

Raw Foods for Busy People: Simple and Machine-Free Recipes for Every Day
Raw Foods for Busy People: Simple and Machine-Free Recipes for Every Day

by Jordan Maerin | Jan 26, 2011   $11.95 +++++++++ 

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO RAW FOOD DIET: All You Need To Know About Raw Food Diet
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO RAW FOOD DIET: All You Need To Know About Raw Food Diet

by ADAM SCHOLES MDKindle  $0.00$0.00 Free with Kindle Unlimited membershipOr $2.99 to buy  Paperback $11.99 ++++++++++

Alkaline Foods: 100% Raw!: Easy and Tasty Raw Food Recipes Including Alkaline Salads, Smoothies and Treats! (Easy Alkaline Recipes)
Alkaline Foods: 100% Raw!: Easy and Tasty Raw Food Recipes Including Alkaline Salads, Smoothies and Treats! (Easy Alkaline Recipes)

by Marta Tuchowska  | Dec 29, 2016Paperback  $14.99 ++++++++++ 

Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body
Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body

by Stephanie L. Tourles  | Dec 23, 2009$16.95     Kindle  $9.99 +++++++++++++

Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body
Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body

by Stephanie L. Tourles  | Dec 23, 2009Paperback   $16.95Kindle  $9.99 +++++++++

Raw Food For Dummies
Raw Food For Dummies

by Cherie Soria  | Dec 10, 2012Paperback  $19.93  ++++++++ 

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Raw Food Detox: Eat Better, Feel Better, Look Better
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Raw Food Detox: Eat Better, Feel Better, Look Better

by Adam A. Graham  | Jul 5, 2011Paperback   $18.95   Kindle$8.99 +++++++

The Juice Lady's Living Foods Revolution: Eat your Way to Health, Detoxification, and Weight Loss with Delicious Juices and Raw Foods
The Juice Lady’s Living Foods Revolution: Eat your Way to Health, Detoxification, and Weight Loss with Delicious Juices and Raw Foods

by Cherie Calbom MSN CN | Jun 7, 2011Kindle$9.85 ++++++++++

Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life Hardcover – April 27, 1999

by Juliano Brotman(Author), Erika LenkertHardcover  $29.31 +++++++  ====================== Sprouts 

Growing Your Own Living Foods: Sprouting The Easy Way
Growing Your Own Living Foods: Sprouting The Easy Way

by Brian Hetrich | Dec 12, 2015Paperback $19.95Kindle$9.99

The Sprouting Book: How to Grow and Use Sprouts to Maximize Your Health and Vitality
The Sprouting Book: How to Grow and Use Sprouts to Maximize Your Health and Vitality

by Ann Wigmore  | Jun 1, 1986Paperback$12.58++++++++ 

Growing Your Own Living Foods: Sprouting The Easy Way
Growing Your Own Living Foods: Sprouting The Easy Way

by Brian Hetrich | Dec 12, 2015Paperback$19.95+++ 

The Sprouting Book: How to Grow and Use Sprouts to Maximize Your Health and Vitality
The Sprouting Book: How to Grow and Use Sprouts to Maximize Your Health and Vitality

by Ann Wigmore  | Jun 1, 1986Paperback  $17.00Kindle $9.99

==========================

Gardman R687 4-Tier Mini Greenhouse, 27" Long x 18" Wide x 63" High
Gardman R687 4-Tier Mini Greenhouse, 27″ Long x 18″ Wide x 63″ High

$59.99

  1.  Ufine Carbonized Wood Plant Stand 6 Tier Vertical Shelf Flower Display Rack Holder Planter Organizer for Indoor Outdoor Garden Patio Balcony Living Room and Office
  2. Between $75 and $200 AeroGarden Black Harvest, 2019 Model
  3. Above $200 AeroGarden, Black Bounty, garden$293.57
Gardening Under Lights: The Complete Guide for Indoor Growers
Gardening Under Lights: The Complete Guide for Indoor Growers

by Leslie F. Halleck  | $29.95 +++++++ 

Indoor Kitchen Gardening: Turn Your Home Into a Year-round Vegetable Garden - Microgreens - Sprouts - Herbs - Mushrooms - Tomatoes, Peppers & More
Indoor Kitchen Gardening: Turn Your Home Into a Year-round Vegetable Garden – Microgreens – Sprouts – Herbs – Mushrooms – Tomatoes, Peppers & More

by Elizabeth Millard  | Jun 15, 2014Paperback  $24.99

Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens in Less Than 10 days
Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens in Less Than 10 days

by Peter Burke  | Sep 18, 2015Paperback   $29.95   =========================  

The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders Hardcover – Apr 20 2018

by Stuart Kells(Author)

Excellent . . . Tracks the history of that greatest of all cultural institutions.” – The Washington Post

Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve. Some still exist today; some are lost, like those of Herculaneum and Alexandria; some have been sold or dispersed; and some never existed, such as those libraries imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, Umberto Eco, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others.

Ancient libraries, grand baroque libraries, scientific libraries, memorial libraries, personal libraries, clandestine libraries: Stuart Kells tells the stories of their creators, their prizes, their secrets, and their fate. To research this book, Kells traveled around the world with his young family like modern-day “Library Tourists.” Kells discovered that all the world’s libraries are connected in beautiful and complex ways, that in the history of libraries, fascinating patterns are created and repeated over centuries. More important, he learned that stories about libraries are stories about people, containing every possible human drama.

The Library is a fascinating and engaging exploration of libraries as places of beauty and wonder. It’s a celebration of books as objects, a celebration of the anthropology and physicality of books and bookish space, and an account of the human side of these hallowed spaces by a leading and passionate bibliophile.” +++++++++++++ 

Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature
Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature

by Stuart Kells  | Apr 2, 2019Hardcover$26.00Kindle  $14.99Other format: Paperback++++++++++

Remarkable Books: The World's Most Historic and Significant Works
Remarkable Books: The World’s Most Historic and Significant Works

by DK  | Sep 5, 2017Hardcover   $30.00$24.50Free with Audible trial 

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Remarkable Trees of the World
Remarkable Trees of the World

by Thomas Pakenham  | Sep 17, 2003Paperback   $35.00+++++++++++ 

The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

by Michio Kaku  | Feb 17, 2015Paperback   $16.95Kindle   $16.95Other formats: Hardcover Audio CD

 ++++++++++
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth

by Michio Kaku, Feodor Chin, et al.Audible Audiobook$31.50
Paperback  
$16.00Kindle$12.99Other formats: Hardcover Audio CD

+++++++++++
The Future Of Learning The Michel Thomas Method: Freeing Minds One Person At A Time
The Future Of Learning The Michel Thomas Method: Freeing Minds One Person At A Time

by Marilyne Woodsmall and Wyatt Woodsmall | Jul 4, 2008 Paperback$38.88++++++++++++++++++

B&S FEEL Wooden Antique Book Box, Set of 2

by B&S FEEL Amazon’sChoicefor “books for decor”  +++++++++++

Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st CenturyMar 4, 1999by Michio KakuKindle Edition$9.99Hardcover$18.97Paperback$13.74 +++++++++++  +++++++ 

  • Multipurpose use wood book box set
  • Sizes: Large book:7.9″ X 6.1″ X 5.5″; Small book: 6.5″ X 5.1″ X 4.3″
  • Designed to look like classic books set
  • Great complement to your home decor
  • Ideal for gifting
decorative storage boxes
decor book1
decorative book boxes

+++++++++++

BY Kaku, Michio ( Author ) [{ Einstein’s Cosmos: How Albert Einstein’s Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time By Kaku, Michio ( Author ) May – 17- 2005 ( Paperback ) } ]Jan 1, 1841by Michio KakuPaperback$115.37$11537 ==================

The Flower Gardener's Bible: A Complete Guide to Colorful Blooms All Season Long: 400 Favorite Flowers, Time-Tested Techniques, Creative Garden Designs, and a Lifetime of Gardening Wisdom
The Flower Gardener’s Bible: A Complete Guide to Colorful Blooms All Season Long: 400 Favorite Flowers, Time-Tested Techniques, Creative Garden Designs, and a Lifetime of Gardening Wisdom

by Lewis Hill , Nancy Hill, et al. | Sold by: Amazon.com Kindle Edition $13.77 Create the flower garden of your dreams. This comprehensive guide includes expert advice on everything from choosing an appropriate growing site to maximizing the lifespan of your plants. Charming illustrations and photographs accompany helpful tips on how to improve soil, fight off pests, and make all your flowers bloom with radiant color. Whether you’re a beginning gardener or a seasoned florist, The Flower Gardener’s Bible is a useful resource that will help you keep your garden healthy and beautiful for years to come.++++++++++++

The Four Season Farm Gardener's Cookbook: From the Garden to the Table in 120 Recipes
The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook: From the Garden to the Table in 120 Recipes

by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLCKindle Edition  $9.99   +++++++++++++++

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

by Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLCKindle Edition$15.76   +++++++++++

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live
The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live

by Niki Jabbour and Joseph De Sciose | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLCKindle Edition$9.99 ++++++++++++  

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, 2nd Edition
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, 2nd Edition

by Eliot Colman, Barbara Damrosch, et al. | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLCKindle Edition$11.11   ++++++++++++

Encyclopedia of Garden Plants for Every Location: Featuring More Than 3,000 Plants Kindle EditionKindersley Dorling

Including more than 2,000 recommendations from gardening experts, Encyclopedia of Garden Plants for Every Location includes planting suggestions for over 30 types of sites, from notoriously dry ground by a hedge or fence to cracks in walls or paving, explains how to assess site and soil, and presents a stunning range of plant partners and planting schemes.

Produced in association with the Smithsonian Institution, whose Smithsonian’s Gardens creates and manages the Smithsonian’s outdoor gardens, interiorscapes, and horticulture-related collections and exhibits, Encyclopedia of Garden Plants for Every Location is the perfect book for gardeners looking to make the most out of their plot.

+++++++

Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers by [Brickell, Christopher]
Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers Kindle Edition

by Christopher Brickell  (Author)

+++++++++

An updated edition of the best-selling highly illustrated garden plant reference, featuring more than 8,000 plants and 4,000 photographs.

Choose the right plants for your garden and find all the inspiration and guidance you need with the Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers. Drawing on expert advice from the RHS, this best-selling book features a photographic catalogue of more than 4,000 plants and flowers, all organized by color, size, and type, to help you select the right varieties for your outdoor space. Discover perennials, bulbs, shrubs, and trees, succulents, and ornamental shrubs, all showcased in beautiful, full-color photography. Browse this photographic catalogue to find at-a-glance plant choice inspiration. Or use the extensive plant dictionary to look up more than 8,000 plant varieties and the best growing conditions.

This new edition features the latest and most popular cultivars, with more than 1,380 new plants added, as well as updated photography, comprehensive hardiness ratings, and a brand-new introduction. Fully comprehensive yet easy to use, the Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers is the inspirational, informative guide every gardener needs on their bookshelf.  +++++++++++++++++++++++

 See all 3 formats and editions

A unique guide to the extraordinary world of plants, from the smallest seeds to the tallest trees.

We couldn’t live without plants. We need them for food, shelter, and even the air we breathe, yet we know surprisingly little about them. Why do thistles bristle with spines? How do some plants trap and eat insects? Did you know there are trees that are 5,000 years old? Trees, Leaves, Flowers & Seeds explores the mysterious world of plants to find the answers to these and many more questions.

Each type of plant–such as a flowering plant, tree, grass, or cactus–is examined close up, with an example shown from all angles and even in cross section, to highlight the key parts. Then picture-packed galleries show the wonderful variety of plants on different themes, perhaps the habitat they grow in, a flower family, or the plants that supply us with our staple foods. But the book also takes a fun look at some truly weird and wonderful plants, including trees with fruits like a giant’s fingers, orchids that look like monkey faces, seeds that spin like helicopters, and trees that drip poison.

So open this beautiful book and find out more about amazing Trees, Leaves, Flowers & Seeds.

++++++++++

Trees, Leaves, Flowers & Seeds: A visual encyclopedia of the plant kingdom Kindle Edition
Picturepedia: An Encyclopedia on Every Page Kindle Edition

 See all 5 formats and editions

Experience all the world’s wonders at once in the ultimate children’s encyclopedia.

Spilling over with history, science, space, nature, and much, much more, this visual reference guide comes complete with more than 10,000 stunning photographs, illustrations, and maps. Every page is a mini-encyclopedia at your fingertips, perfectly designed to educate, engage, and entertain.

From microscopic insects to the Big Bang theory, Picturepedia explains every subject under (and including) the Sun to satisfy the curious minds of young readers. Discover the secrets of prehistoric life, explore the inner workings of the human body, and lead an orchestra of musical instruments through breathtaking photographic galleries and detailed graphics that explain every topic in incredible depth and detail.

With more than 150 essential topics covered, Picturepedia is ideal for homework, projects, or just for fun. This absolute must-have book is the ideal gift for young people eager to know about everything and anything.

+++++++++++

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