Overview

Most of us give little thought to the back of the book--it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it 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. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart--and we have been for eight hundred years.

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Reviews

Index, A History of the is not only about books...but about the nature of reading and about how we understand, categorize and engage with the world. -- History Today [A] witty and wide-ranging study...writing as if academic research were as revved-up as a Formula One race. -- The Guardian (London) Duncan's fascinating study of the origins of the index offers subversion, whimsy and hope. -- Financial Times (London) Enlightening and entertaining...Duncan mixes humor and scholarship to brilliant effect in this accessible deep dive. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Sparkles with geeky wit and shines with an infectious enthusiasm. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Index, A History of the is not only about books...but about the nature of reading and about how we understand, categorize and engage with the world. -- ""History Today"" [A] witty and wide-ranging study...writing as if academic research were as revved-up as a Formula One race. -- ""The Guardian (London)"" Duncan's fascinating study of the origins of the index offers subversion, whimsy ― and hope. -- ""Financial Times (London)"" Enlightening and entertaining...Duncan mixes humor and scholarship to brilliant effect in this accessible deep dive. -- ""Publishers Weekly (starred review)"" Sparkles with geeky wit and shines with an infectious enthusiasm. -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"""

Author Information

Dennis Duncan is a writer, translator, lecturer in English at University College London, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published numerous academic books, including Book Parts and The Oulipo and Modern Thought, as well as translations of Michel Foucault, Boris Vian, and Alfred Jarry. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books, and recent articles have considered Mallarm� and jugs, James Joyce and pornography, and the history of Times New Roman. Neil Gardner owns and runs Ladbroke Audio Ltd., one of the UK's leading independent audiobook production houses. He has been a professional broadcaster and narrator for over twenty-five years, working in UK and international radio, and then BBC and commercial independent audio. He has narrated more than thirty audiobooks, winning the prestigious AudioFile Earphones Award in 2018. He has also produced numerous internationally award-winning audiobooks and audio dramas for publishers including BBC Audio, Audible, Penguin Random House, and Little, Brown Book Group. He owns and runs his own audio studios in Croydon, Surrey (UK), which are used by leading UK audio publishers every day.

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