{"id":1382,"date":"2019-03-06T12:33:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T12:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2025-09-21T18:31:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T22:31:30","slug":"michelle-levy-and-tom-mole-eds-the-broadview-introduction-to-book-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2019\/03\/06\/michelle-levy-and-tom-mole-eds-the-broadview-introduction-to-book-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, eds., The Broadview Introduction to Book History<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, eds., The Broadview Introduction to Book History<\/em><\/h1>\n\n
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Jacqueline Reid-Walsh<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Cover<\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, eds. The Broadview Introduction to Book History. <\/em>Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2017. 256 p., ill. ISBN: 9781554810871. $US31.95.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Broadview Introduction to Book History<\/em> (2017) is an unusual textbook. It provides an informed introduction that is scholarly, concise and accessible to readers at different points in their education. At the same time, it is written in such an animated style and tone that I cannot wait to use it in class and follow through on the suggested readings myself. Although packaged as a companion book to The Broadview Reader in Book History <\/em>(2014),I found the Introduction to be excellent by itself as it provides such a thorough and contained discussion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nwriting, tone and balanced approach to some \u201chot spots\u201d in book\nhistory studies such as the material\/digital divide are all\nexcellent. The content and style are exemplary as educational\nprompts. The examples are very well chosen from a wide range of texts\nfrom different periods and genres of English and American literature,\nincluding Children\u2019s Literature. Used as a textbook, one can link\nclass activities with some of its rhetorical approaches and\ndiscussions. For example, the beginning of the first chapter,\n\u201cMateriality,\u201d gives me an idea for extending a class exercise in\nboth undergraduate surveys of children\u2019s literature and graduate\ncourses on historical children\u2019s books. Doing the exercise based\non this discussion, it could be called Pre-reading, or the book as\nobject, or what the book tells you about itself, would enable an\ninstructor to hook a class\u2019s attention to books as objects and\ntexts, as well as become self-reflective about the roles of a reader.\nSimilarly, Ch. 2 on \u201cTextuality\u201d begins with a teachable\ndiscussion about the capitalization and punctuation of Keats \u201cOde\non a Grecian Urn.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nDue\nto my own interests, I found the discussion of marginalia most\nrewarding. Due to my own learning trajectory, I found Ch. 3 on\n\u201cPrinting and Reading\u201d and Ch 4. on \u201cIntermediality\u201d most\ninformative. My only criticism is that the last chapter on\n\u201cRemediating,\u201d although it necessarily covers a wide span of\nmaterial, became a bit too survey-like. Here, although I understand\nthe constraints of both writing an introduction and of\nglossary-making, I would have liked a few more key digital literacy\nterms defined \u2013 especially \u201cremediation,\u201d drawing on media-in-\ntransition thinkers such as Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin, David\nThornburn ,and Henry Jenkins. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\napplaud Broadview for the attractive layout but have two criticisms.\nThe page numbers are unusual in the side margins but the small size\nmakes them hard to spot quickly. The choice of and location of the\nfigures are excellent. In one place though, unfortunately the\nplacement worked against the argument a bit. If figure 4.2 could have\nbeen placed above the final paragraph on page 121 that starts another\ndiscussion, the reader could compare the facsimile image and the\ntyped words of Emily Dickinson\u2019s poem more fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to congratulate and thank Michelle Levy and Tom Mole and Broadview for undertaking this important and fascinating contribution to book history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Pennsylvania State University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Broadview Introduction to Book History (2017) is an unusual textbook. It provides an informed introduction that is scholarly, concise and accessible to readers at different points in their education. At the same time, it is written in such an animated style and tone that I cannot wait to use it in class and follow through on the suggested readings myself. Although packaged as a companion book to The Broadview Reader in Book History (2014),I found the Introduction to be excellent by itself as it provides such a thorough and contained discussion. \u261b \u261e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1946],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-pedagogy"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5703,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions\/5703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}