{"product_id":"smyth-adam-the-book-mpb","title":"[10\/20\/26] Smyth, Adam: The Book-Makers","description":"\u003cp\u003eBasic Books, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: October 20, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn Economist Book of the Year\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Almost every page--almost every paragraph--fizzes with facts, allusions, speculations, tidbits of etymology and gems of historical interest.\" -- Wall Street Journal\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBooks have transformed humankind, yet we know little about the individuals who brought these fascinating objects into existence. Who were these renegade book-makers who changed the course of history through their experiments in the arts of printing, paper making, type designing, binding, advertising, and selling?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Book-Makers offers a new way to understand the story of Western culture's most important object through a series of dynamic portraits of eighteen men and women who helped to define the book. From Wynkyn de Worde's cheap bestsellers produced in fifteenth-century London, to Nancy Cunard's avant-garde pamphlets made on her small press in Normandy; from Benjamin Franklin's inky entrepreneurialism, to the radical culture of contemporary zines, this is a celebration of the book with the people put back in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45361793892375,"sku":"9781541609167","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/91G1YASGxUL._SL1500.jpg?v=1786145855","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/smyth-adam-the-book-mpb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}