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Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book—it’s just where you go to look things up. But here is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known history.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index 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. Duncan reveals the vast role of the index in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, and he shows that in the Age of Search we are all index-rakers at heart.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index 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. Duncan reveals the vast role of the index in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, and he shows that in the Age of Search we are all index-rakers at heart.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2021
About the author
Dennis Duncan
7 books40 followersDennis Duncan studied English at Manchester University, before completing a PhD at Birkbeck in 2011. After teaching at Birkbeck, he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, then Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge. He joined the English department at University College London in 2019.
Library of Congress Authorities: Duncan, Dennis (Dennis J. B.)
Full name: Dennis John Balle Duncan
Library of Congress Authorities: Duncan, Dennis (Dennis J. B.)
Full name: Dennis John Balle Duncan
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 480 reviews
August 14, 2021
Evergreen, Anthony, his collection of fig-leaves for the ladies, 100
Duncan has written a wonderful crossover book here which has the solid foundations and academic rigour for scholars, but which is as entertaining as it is informative and has an eye for the humorous, the ridiculous and the telling example to appeal to a general audience.
As someone who made a complete mess of indexing my first monograph (NB. the UK's one of two probably best known academic publishers does not use professional indexers and requires the author to index their own book, albeit with the embedded indexing software discussed in the final chapter) I am now first in line to support the importance of a good index but had little to no idea of the history of indexing - I do now!
From the introduction of alphabet-based organisation (ah, but which alphabet?) to the vastly amusing index wars of the eighteenth century, and onto the effective indexing that is Google search and hashtags, this puts the idea of search and information management into a Western cultural context. Duncan discusses subject indexes (not indices), concordances, Victorian attempts to create a universal index of knowledge (think Mr Casaubon in George Eliot's Middlemarch) and does it all with wit, an engaging sense of humour and genuine erudition. And I'm still giggling at the innocence of Susan Boyle's PR team who created a hashtag to promote the launch of her new album but without paying attention to how it might read: #susanalbumparty!
In lots of ways, this continues the scholarly interest in the history of the book, the history of reading, the book as material object (early chapters deal with scrolls, manuscripts and the codex before the advent of printed books) - and is good on how contemporary doom-mongering on how Google is making us all stupid is merely a reiteration of arguments against the index that have existed as long as the index itself. Hugely enjoyable, enlightening and entertaining.
Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley
March 13, 2022
The understated cleverness of the title gives a good idea of how the book will be: very British, very comprehensive, and interesting despite its seemingly dry subject matter. The author does a great job of showing how the index came to be (and the many innovations from alphabetical order to page numbers that had to be standardized to allow it to arise) and an even better way of how the index can be used as a tool of research, literature, obfuscation, and even political satire and attack. Highly recommended.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
June 17, 2021
This is a curious and charming book. It's a book about books - more specifically, the last few pages of a book that you turn to if you can't remember where an entry was mentioned. A meta-meta book, if you will.
I'll confess - I don't think I've ever used an index. Not for study nor for leisure. Almost all of my reading since the turn of the century has been digital - so I hit
+
when I want to find something. And, if I'm honest, I thought that indexes (never indices) were compiled automatically. I had no idea that that in the modern world, it was someone's actual job to create a useful index.
The history of organising thought is extraordinary. Once we reached "Big Data" (too many scrolls to fit on a single shelf) it becomes obvious that humans need metadata to make sense of the vast troves of material we generate. The book goes from the earliest invention of indexing, through its surge is popularity, up to the modern day. It covers the fashions, the spats, and the technology which unlocked its popularity.
It almost exclusively focuses on English and Latin. It would have been nice to learn about non-European indexes.
If you're a lover of books, you'll love this. It is a warm and witty look at the development of reading technology - and how it has helped shape both the world and the written word. It has some beautiful images of early books which illustrate the main next nicely.
Who knew that indexes could be so political and cause so much controversy? It shouldn't surprise me, of course. Gathering and presenting data is not a neutral act.
Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The book comes out later in 2021.
I'll confess - I don't think I've ever used an index. Not for study nor for leisure. Almost all of my reading since the turn of the century has been digital - so I hit
+
when I want to find something. And, if I'm honest, I thought that indexes (never indices) were compiled automatically. I had no idea that that in the modern world, it was someone's actual job to create a useful index.
The history of organising thought is extraordinary. Once we reached "Big Data" (too many scrolls to fit on a single shelf) it becomes obvious that humans need metadata to make sense of the vast troves of material we generate. The book goes from the earliest invention of indexing, through its surge is popularity, up to the modern day. It covers the fashions, the spats, and the technology which unlocked its popularity.
It almost exclusively focuses on English and Latin. It would have been nice to learn about non-European indexes.
If you're a lover of books, you'll love this. It is a warm and witty look at the development of reading technology - and how it has helped shape both the world and the written word. It has some beautiful images of early books which illustrate the main next nicely.
Who knew that indexes could be so political and cause so much controversy? It shouldn't surprise me, of course. Gathering and presenting data is not a neutral act.
Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The book comes out later in 2021.
Read
August 8, 2022Interesting look at indexing: how it developed, how it works, and how it can be used for snark. Plenty of that here, including in the excellent index to this very book, compiled by Paula Clark Bain, which, like many indexes, pretty much summarises the book's thesis in neat form, which is of course what the book is actually about. How recursive. I should also note that this wins the award for best ever title hands down.
I was slightly surprised not to see Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers referenced, as it has probably the best use of index for screwing about with story that I've ever read. If you enjoy this book, pick that up.
I was slightly surprised not to see Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers referenced, as it has probably the best use of index for screwing about with story that I've ever read. If you enjoy this book, pick that up.
Read
March 9, 2023I am an absolute sucker for histories of things you'd never even have thought there might be a history of, packed with unknown unknowns, and doubly so if the writer has that erudite yet faintly silly tone of an eccentric old-school don, meaning this was always likely to be up my alley. The title is slightly misleading, in that the book also covers the evolution of the whole family of devices by which we find our way within a text without having to (re)read the whole damn thing, from the table of contents to the Bible's chapters and verses (the latter in particular being standardised far later than I would have guessed). When Duncan titles Chapter 3 "Where Would We Be Without It? The Miracle of the Page Number", it does sound very reminiscent of that film about zinc* in The Simpsons, but crucially, I bet he knows it does. At the same time, he also knows that while alphabetical order can seem like it's simply the default way to order things, the Romans completely ignored it and Christianity regarded it with a certain suspicion, as abdicating the need to find and use the more fitting organisational system by which the world's creator had surely ordered it. Which is not only funny in itself, but also makes so much more sense of those various grand, doomed attempts to classify all things in the world into various slipshod categories, which always amuse me so much from a distance. While we're on Christianity, I should mention the only possible error I noticed in the book, which comes as Duncan dissects an illustration of one of the index's two fathers, Robert Grosseteste – because yes, like the steam engine or the lightbulb, it was one of those ideas born more than once at around the same time, and yes, that name does mean 'big head', which may have been a nickname based on his erudition but is in any case better than what I initially thought. Anyway, this picture shows a rapt human audience, but also a pelican, which Duncan glosses as "a symbol of bad audience, staring insolently, resolutely offstage". Now, obviously nowadays we're all aware that pelicans are dicks, but at that time they were generally taken to represent Jesus, which to be honest still works fine if you hold Christianity in the same esteem I do, but I suspect may mean that Duncan is slightly misreading the artist's intended effect.
Elsewhere, though, he's dug up all sorts of fascinating information. I had no idea that chunks of the Bible were, in Hebrew at least, alphabetic acrostics – let alone that they include Lamentations, as far as you can get from the slightly twee and gimmicky associations that form tends to carry in English. Even aside from the tradition of hostile indexing – which also gives us Macaulay's wonderful description of one lively, egregious text** as "the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant" – Duncan is very good on suspicion of the index, which fits neatly into the whole wearily amusing history whereby every advance in information technology has, to the old fools of its era, represented the death knell for true wisdom and understanding – Duncan quite correctly draws the parallels both with the 'Google has made us stupid' witterings of our own day, and Plato's suspicion of writing (and for myself, I'm 100% certain that even speech was greeted with dismay by certain elders of the last pre-speech generation; it's just that unlike all their equally obscurantist heirs, their moaning was mercifully incapable of transmission down to the present day). And as this indicates, he does have a handle on the big picture, not just the grab-bag of undigested gobbets which detractors claimed the index encouraged. After all, the topic takes in some territory that's more conceptual than one might first expect, not least the fundamental quandary of how detailed to make an index when one that's too capacious simply reproduces the whole book, but one that's too minimal is scarcely more useful. Needless to say, this book comes with two, or more properly one and a bit; the partial one is by AI, and comical in its witlessness; the complete (in so far as they ever can be) version is by crack indexer Paula Clarke Bain, and at least five times funnier in its abundant wit, not to mention vastly more useful, except when it deliberately isn't.
And if you think your job is laborious bullshit, spare a thought for 14th century scribe John Lutton who, having copied out hefty history book the Polychronicon, proceeded to painstakingly copy out the index too. An index which, because page numbers, let alone columns, do not necessarily carry across from one hand-copied book to another, was of course entirely broken.
*The irony being that I have never known any material which, overlooked by the masses, arouses such absolute loathing among people who know their materials as zinc. Don't ask me why, but it's the metallurgy equivalent of finding out someone loves the Divine Comedy and then saying how much you like National Express.
**By one Charles Boyle, who joins Christopher Eccleston as a surprising namesake in the account. This Charles was not a foodie cop, but a participant in a 17th century academic spat – though in the index he still finds himself butting up against Susan, canonically related to the more recent Charles, and present on account of a certain calamitous hashtag.
Elsewhere, though, he's dug up all sorts of fascinating information. I had no idea that chunks of the Bible were, in Hebrew at least, alphabetic acrostics – let alone that they include Lamentations, as far as you can get from the slightly twee and gimmicky associations that form tends to carry in English. Even aside from the tradition of hostile indexing – which also gives us Macaulay's wonderful description of one lively, egregious text** as "the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant" – Duncan is very good on suspicion of the index, which fits neatly into the whole wearily amusing history whereby every advance in information technology has, to the old fools of its era, represented the death knell for true wisdom and understanding – Duncan quite correctly draws the parallels both with the 'Google has made us stupid' witterings of our own day, and Plato's suspicion of writing (and for myself, I'm 100% certain that even speech was greeted with dismay by certain elders of the last pre-speech generation; it's just that unlike all their equally obscurantist heirs, their moaning was mercifully incapable of transmission down to the present day). And as this indicates, he does have a handle on the big picture, not just the grab-bag of undigested gobbets which detractors claimed the index encouraged. After all, the topic takes in some territory that's more conceptual than one might first expect, not least the fundamental quandary of how detailed to make an index when one that's too capacious simply reproduces the whole book, but one that's too minimal is scarcely more useful. Needless to say, this book comes with two, or more properly one and a bit; the partial one is by AI, and comical in its witlessness; the complete (in so far as they ever can be) version is by crack indexer Paula Clarke Bain, and at least five times funnier in its abundant wit, not to mention vastly more useful, except when it deliberately isn't.
And if you think your job is laborious bullshit, spare a thought for 14th century scribe John Lutton who, having copied out hefty history book the Polychronicon, proceeded to painstakingly copy out the index too. An index which, because page numbers, let alone columns, do not necessarily carry across from one hand-copied book to another, was of course entirely broken.
*The irony being that I have never known any material which, overlooked by the masses, arouses such absolute loathing among people who know their materials as zinc. Don't ask me why, but it's the metallurgy equivalent of finding out someone loves the Divine Comedy and then saying how much you like National Express.
**By one Charles Boyle, who joins Christopher Eccleston as a surprising namesake in the account. This Charles was not a foodie cop, but a participant in a 17th century academic spat – though in the index he still finds himself butting up against Susan, canonically related to the more recent Charles, and present on account of a certain calamitous hashtag.
November 23, 2021
Ever had that moment when you remember reading something in a book and can’t remember what page it was on? I do frequently, especially when I am trying to find a quote for a review and when it is a fiction book I can sometimes not find what I am looking for at all. With non-fiction, I often stand a better chance as there is a tool I can use at the back of the book called the index.
It is the part of the book that people rarely venture too and I don’t always look at them, but there are points when trying to find a particular reference that is invaluable. But they need one other thing to work properly and that is page numbering. An index that can tell you what is in a book, but can’t tell you where to find it is not a lot of use…
He begins with just how we order things and the origins of the alphabet and how a man called Callimachus organised the 40,00 or so scrolls of Ptolemy II. Cicero the great Roman stateman also had an extensive library and he solved the problem of finding the scroll he needed by tags tied to the end of the scrolls. And it was these tags that gave us the word, index.
By the middle ages, the people that needed to find various references in books were the church and the codex, or the book format as we are familiar with nowadays had long been available. The two things that bring them together were the teaching and preaching of the age. Various religious men began to develop methods of finding scriptural references that they needed for sermons and the techniques caught on and were taken and developed by others.
The addition of page numbers would be a big help, but an index that referred to page numbers was not always accurate when dealing with handwritten books. A different scribe that had a larger script, could be producing a book that was several pages longer than the original. Ironically we have come full circle now as an e-reader can increase or decrease the font size making the page referencing nonsense…
He expands further on the way that these systems developed and ventures into the foolhardy attempts to try to index fiction. There is a section on searching the web, when you look for something on Google, you are not searching the web, rather you are looking at their index of pages and references that their bots have extracted, filtered and sorted.
It is not a bad book overall, but I did have the odd issue with it. I liked the way that he goes right back to find the very origins of the index and that the book is peppered with images from books and other sources as well as being crammed full of references and quotes. I liked that he had used a computer-generated index and a human-created index so you can see the differences between the two and make your own judgement about which s the best. This must be one of the few books with two indexes. However, I thought that the prose was a little dry and academic at times and thought that the narrative was not as strong as it could have been. Definitely one for the book geek.
It is the part of the book that people rarely venture too and I don’t always look at them, but there are points when trying to find a particular reference that is invaluable. But they need one other thing to work properly and that is page numbering. An index that can tell you what is in a book, but can’t tell you where to find it is not a lot of use…
He begins with just how we order things and the origins of the alphabet and how a man called Callimachus organised the 40,00 or so scrolls of Ptolemy II. Cicero the great Roman stateman also had an extensive library and he solved the problem of finding the scroll he needed by tags tied to the end of the scrolls. And it was these tags that gave us the word, index.
By the middle ages, the people that needed to find various references in books were the church and the codex, or the book format as we are familiar with nowadays had long been available. The two things that bring them together were the teaching and preaching of the age. Various religious men began to develop methods of finding scriptural references that they needed for sermons and the techniques caught on and were taken and developed by others.
The addition of page numbers would be a big help, but an index that referred to page numbers was not always accurate when dealing with handwritten books. A different scribe that had a larger script, could be producing a book that was several pages longer than the original. Ironically we have come full circle now as an e-reader can increase or decrease the font size making the page referencing nonsense…
He expands further on the way that these systems developed and ventures into the foolhardy attempts to try to index fiction. There is a section on searching the web, when you look for something on Google, you are not searching the web, rather you are looking at their index of pages and references that their bots have extracted, filtered and sorted.
It is not a bad book overall, but I did have the odd issue with it. I liked the way that he goes right back to find the very origins of the index and that the book is peppered with images from books and other sources as well as being crammed full of references and quotes. I liked that he had used a computer-generated index and a human-created index so you can see the differences between the two and make your own judgement about which s the best. This must be one of the few books with two indexes. However, I thought that the prose was a little dry and academic at times and thought that the narrative was not as strong as it could have been. Definitely one for the book geek.
September 21, 2021
There is a kind of quirky non-fiction book where an interested amateur scrapes the surface of a seemingly trivial topic and gets a minor amount of material and a few half decent jokes in. This is not that kind of book, not least because the jokes here are good. Dennis Duncan knows Indexes, he has studied them and will continue to study them. And this book, despite its flippant fun title, gets the non-fiction balance just right. There is scholarship galore here, from Greek letters to a romp through indexes of the bible, all the way up to the death and rebirth of the index (something he takes with a sanguine air even though I read it on an e-book which at that point had no index).
This is a book about how information technology can be beautiful, and Duncan does not shy away from his admiration of those who invented the Index on the fly. He is a little more jaunty about about those who indexed ever single word in the Bible, and delights in finding the politics and backbiting jibes hidden or sometimes in plain sight in indexes. He grudgingly accepts Tables Of Contents as a kind of index, but will also show how tawdry they can be too. What comes across most strongly is his delight in this being his unfettered field of study, and how he enjoys sharing it. So the book has a perfect structure, as it rattles through history (whilst taking appropriate diversions), but also he has a way of pepping up what might otherwise be a dry anecdote (bearing in mind that literary index jokes are pretty much the dictionary definition of dry anecdote).
"Index, A History of the" is one of the few non-fiction reads I have had over the last couple of years that I could have read more of. It doesn't appear to miss much out but I can just tell with the mastery of the subject that Duncan had to leave plenty on the cutting room floor - not least international indexes (and maybe he could do a double act with The Chinese Typewriter and consider indexes in non-alphabetic languages). For something that almost appears to be a joke subject, he justifies his interest almost instantly and then drags the reader in to. A book of the year for me,
This is a book about how information technology can be beautiful, and Duncan does not shy away from his admiration of those who invented the Index on the fly. He is a little more jaunty about about those who indexed ever single word in the Bible, and delights in finding the politics and backbiting jibes hidden or sometimes in plain sight in indexes. He grudgingly accepts Tables Of Contents as a kind of index, but will also show how tawdry they can be too. What comes across most strongly is his delight in this being his unfettered field of study, and how he enjoys sharing it. So the book has a perfect structure, as it rattles through history (whilst taking appropriate diversions), but also he has a way of pepping up what might otherwise be a dry anecdote (bearing in mind that literary index jokes are pretty much the dictionary definition of dry anecdote).
"Index, A History of the" is one of the few non-fiction reads I have had over the last couple of years that I could have read more of. It doesn't appear to miss much out but I can just tell with the mastery of the subject that Duncan had to leave plenty on the cutting room floor - not least international indexes (and maybe he could do a double act with The Chinese Typewriter and consider indexes in non-alphabetic languages). For something that almost appears to be a joke subject, he justifies his interest almost instantly and then drags the reader in to. A book of the year for me,
April 4, 2023
Read for the BookTube prize 2023. Review in April,
A quirky historical look at how the index evolved and has become an accepted part or an expected part of books and information gathering. This author took what might have been a very dull topic and breathed quite a bit of life into it. I did listen to it on audio and found it entertaining and it sparked my thinking. The explanation about how historically books have changed and why in this day and age we depend on using an Index to find just what we are looking for rather than reading entire texts was so obvious (think Google as an Index of the Internet) and so necessary in this age where information on any subject can bury us.
Much of this book is the historical aspect which I found the most interesting: parchments to manuscripts to books. As their numbers increased and the use of the knowledge of what came before became a necessary part of education the Index was invented. Who knew? It was something I'd never really thought about but it made so much sense and gave me a new appreciation for this "simple" device.
A quirky historical look at how the index evolved and has become an accepted part or an expected part of books and information gathering. This author took what might have been a very dull topic and breathed quite a bit of life into it. I did listen to it on audio and found it entertaining and it sparked my thinking. The explanation about how historically books have changed and why in this day and age we depend on using an Index to find just what we are looking for rather than reading entire texts was so obvious (think Google as an Index of the Internet) and so necessary in this age where information on any subject can bury us.
Much of this book is the historical aspect which I found the most interesting: parchments to manuscripts to books. As their numbers increased and the use of the knowledge of what came before became a necessary part of education the Index was invented. Who knew? It was something I'd never really thought about but it made so much sense and gave me a new appreciation for this "simple" device.
January 6, 2022
As a bookworm, I was hoping I'd find a fascinating history here of a much-used, totally taken for granted feature of non-fiction books: the humble index. I love indexes! Sadly, this book was rather dry, with the exception of the occasional anecdote about how someone used their index to take a dig at someone else.
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for the digital review copy.
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for the digital review copy.
March 5, 2022
This sounded fascinating; unfortunately, the title was the best part!
There are too many books out there to persist with one where the writing is so annoying. I bailed on this book based totally on the introduction (although I must admit the book flap was somewhat disappointing too). The writing was odd and offputting, like saying that historical indexers like Samuel Johnson were "tinkering with" a "technology" (? technology?) and saying a housewife who sets up a system to organize the items in her kitchen is creating an index. I had no desire to proceed to Chapter 1.
I am certainly glad it was a library book.
There are too many books out there to persist with one where the writing is so annoying. I bailed on this book based totally on the introduction (although I must admit the book flap was somewhat disappointing too). The writing was odd and offputting, like saying that historical indexers like Samuel Johnson were "tinkering with" a "technology" (? technology?) and saying a housewife who sets up a system to organize the items in her kitchen is creating an index. I had no desire to proceed to Chapter 1.
I am certainly glad it was a library book.
May 29, 2022
An interesting entry in the "history of a closely-observed object/idea"—although it's actually even more narrowly focused than the title would indicate, since Dennis Duncan focuses almost entirely on indexes in the Western world, and largely on Anglophone indexes at that. I've read enough about the topic enough before now that the medieval/early modern sections didn't tell me much new, and I wanted more heft/info in the section about how search engines (the modern equivalent of concordances) work, because that's something I know less about and because the decisions that Google et al are often much more opaque, it seems, than those made by people centuries ago.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1645808644i/7494844._UX200_CR0,6,200,200_.jpg)
Shelved as 'dnf'
January 9, 2023Bored.
June 25, 2022
This is a fine book as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.
This is, despite what the summary and cover imply, a history of Western indexes, and a pretty narrow one at that. I knew this book wasn't going to be what I wanted it to be after the chapter on alphabetizing; there is no mention of how indexes are organized in languages that don't use an alphabet. (Really it's worse than that -- this entire book pretty much covers only indexes in Latin and English.) Similarly, there is no mention of what Islamic or Jewish scholars were up to during any of these periods; if you were going solely by this book, you'd think Christianity was the only religion that ever tried to organize information. (I assure you it is not.) The section on modern indexes -- Google, etc. -- was also wildly lacking. The research just wasn't there.
And I guess that's the best summary of this book I've got: the research wasn't there, not on any of these topics. I'm not sorry I read this, but it's more of a random trivia book than it is a comprehensive exploration of a topic. I was hoping for more.
This is, despite what the summary and cover imply, a history of Western indexes, and a pretty narrow one at that. I knew this book wasn't going to be what I wanted it to be after the chapter on alphabetizing; there is no mention of how indexes are organized in languages that don't use an alphabet. (Really it's worse than that -- this entire book pretty much covers only indexes in Latin and English.) Similarly, there is no mention of what Islamic or Jewish scholars were up to during any of these periods; if you were going solely by this book, you'd think Christianity was the only religion that ever tried to organize information. (I assure you it is not.) The section on modern indexes -- Google, etc. -- was also wildly lacking. The research just wasn't there.
And I guess that's the best summary of this book I've got: the research wasn't there, not on any of these topics. I'm not sorry I read this, but it's more of a random trivia book than it is a comprehensive exploration of a topic. I was hoping for more.
December 30, 2022
Jo Walton wrote:
"This is brilliant. It’s exactly what it says, a history of indexes, full of information, conveyed in a lively and sometimes amusing way. Just great. I read this at the speed I read fiction and was sorry when it was over. Generally if you’re interested in book history at all you probably reached out to order it as soon as you saw the title. Absolutely excellent book, just how popular nonfiction should be. Read it, you’ll love it."
Well. I found it rather a maddening book. The best parts are great. The early parts, about indexing of religious texts, I found unreadable. But along about the 17th and 18th centuries it got interesting, and in parts very entertaining. Lewis Carroll's indexes to his own novels and journals! Political sparring in the index pages: "Let no damned Tory index my History!" The book tails off on a weak note, on the computerization of indexing, and why ebooks lack decent indexes. Anyway, it's a short book, so if you skim the dull parts, you won't feel like you've wasted much time. 3+ stars overall.
"This is brilliant. It’s exactly what it says, a history of indexes, full of information, conveyed in a lively and sometimes amusing way. Just great. I read this at the speed I read fiction and was sorry when it was over. Generally if you’re interested in book history at all you probably reached out to order it as soon as you saw the title. Absolutely excellent book, just how popular nonfiction should be. Read it, you’ll love it."
Well. I found it rather a maddening book. The best parts are great. The early parts, about indexing of religious texts, I found unreadable. But along about the 17th and 18th centuries it got interesting, and in parts very entertaining. Lewis Carroll's indexes to his own novels and journals! Political sparring in the index pages: "Let no damned Tory index my History!" The book tails off on a weak note, on the computerization of indexing, and why ebooks lack decent indexes. Anyway, it's a short book, so if you skim the dull parts, you won't feel like you've wasted much time. 3+ stars overall.
July 30, 2023
Funny that I thought this book was about indexed = banned literature, but surprise it´s about indexes of books and other writings which is quite a niche product. it´s definitely written for experts, so some parts turn out dry, but otherwise it´s interesting if not always easy to read. Themes include the alphabet, various indexes, concordances etc. combined with the history of reading (with the finger on the page and loud!) and writing till today´s googling and indexes as art. A pity that already in the first chapter there´s a conservative view on men and women, and there are also spoilers of books, f.e. Agatha Christie´s ABC Murder, so be careful about that!
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.
August 27, 2021
A fascinating book, although perhaps for a niche audience. I knew nothing about the history of the practice of constructing indexes and, while I vaguely knew that some authors had used indexes humorously and satirically, the political and social aspects had never really occurred to me. The author's style is engaging and the underpinning scholarship is impressive in its detail. But I found reading an electronic version very constraining and I would have preferred to be able to turn the pages of the two indexes.
At one stage in my life decided that an indexing qualification would be a useful professional expertise to acquire. However, following the correspondence course offered by the Society of Indexers proved to be too great a challenge in a small house with lively young children who saw boxes of index cards as interesting playthings so I never completed it. Since then, I have always admired a good index. For my first book, the publisher required an index to be submitted with the manuscript: I was quite keen to do it myself but time constraints forced me to use the basic software supplied with an early version of Word. I doubt whether this has hampered the small handful of readers who found their way to this slim volume. For my second, and last, book I was delighted to discover that the publisher would commission the index. The topic is not mainstream and my anxiety as to whether they would find a suitably knowledgeable person was assuaged when it arrived, it is a very good index - indeed, the indexer should have had a credit and had the production process timing allowed I would have included his name in the acknowledgements.
For readers who enjoy this book I recommend Anthony Grafton's book on the footnote.
Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC.
At one stage in my life decided that an indexing qualification would be a useful professional expertise to acquire. However, following the correspondence course offered by the Society of Indexers proved to be too great a challenge in a small house with lively young children who saw boxes of index cards as interesting playthings so I never completed it. Since then, I have always admired a good index. For my first book, the publisher required an index to be submitted with the manuscript: I was quite keen to do it myself but time constraints forced me to use the basic software supplied with an early version of Word. I doubt whether this has hampered the small handful of readers who found their way to this slim volume. For my second, and last, book I was delighted to discover that the publisher would commission the index. The topic is not mainstream and my anxiety as to whether they would find a suitably knowledgeable person was assuaged when it arrived, it is a very good index - indeed, the indexer should have had a credit and had the production process timing allowed I would have included his name in the acknowledgements.
For readers who enjoy this book I recommend Anthony Grafton's book on the footnote.
Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC.
February 18, 2022
A surprisingly fun take on what could easily be a very dull subject (well maybe not that surprising, given I chose to pick it up). It provides a broader insight into the history of related concepts such as libraries and universities, and there are some interesting anecdotes about early indexes… which were often highly impractical to actually use. Thank god for Google, I guess.
There are some elements that aren’t necessarily suited to audio - reading out lists from historical indexes is really beyond even the most talented narrator’s ability to salvage - but overall an enjoyable listen.
There are some elements that aren’t necessarily suited to audio - reading out lists from historical indexes is really beyond even the most talented narrator’s ability to salvage - but overall an enjoyable listen.
January 8, 2022
I picked this up wondering what on earth the author could have to say about indexes that would reasonably fill 350 pages, ended up feeling that he barely scratched the surface and I need more books like this one immediately.
March 18, 2022
This book is a history of a piece of intellectual technology — the Index. Yes, this is pre-digital and pre-mechanical technology. I read a lot and must confess that I take the idea of a book (or codex) for granted, along with its table of context, citations or references, and the index (or indexes) that come at the end. Professor Duncan knows a lot about books and does a masterful job of explaining how the introduction of different indexes (alphabetical and subject) evolved with the transition from medieval manuscripts to printed volumes for wider circulations. It is hard to keep track of all of the different aspects of this story that are engaging. I confess that I had not given much thought to the simple matter of alphabetical order and its role in indexing (and classification more generally). The story develops through the Enlightenment and into the beginnings of modernity and the development and spread of libraries and labrary associations. This is all superb.
I had been concerned for how the author would cover the transition into the digital ages and the introduction of punched cards and floppy discs to the craft of indexing. Duncan does an especially good job here and the linkage between PCs, iPads, and Google with the traditions of indexing is extraordinary for its clarity. This is a well told story and depending on ones interests, some materials will be newer than others.. The story itself and how it is tied together, is worth the price of the book.
I strongly recommend the book.
I had been concerned for how the author would cover the transition into the digital ages and the introduction of punched cards and floppy discs to the craft of indexing. Duncan does an especially good job here and the linkage between PCs, iPads, and Google with the traditions of indexing is extraordinary for its clarity. This is a well told story and depending on ones interests, some materials will be newer than others.. The story itself and how it is tied together, is worth the price of the book.
I strongly recommend the book.
April 18, 2022
I think that you have to be a bibliophile and a bit of a nerd to like this one. I'm both. It is written in an engaging style that could appeal to a wider audience, but the subject matter is specialized at a level that would seem to make a broad audience unlikely.
The thing that I found most fascinating was that something that I have always taken for granted - that indexes are inappropriate for novels, but that every non-fiction book should have an alphabetical subject index at the end - is not at all as obvious as it seems. Even the idea of alphabetical order took some time to develop, and the idea of a key to subject matter tied to page numbers is uniquely adapted to the codex - a bound book with numbered pages, which is a form that only became widely used in late ancient and early medieval times and then truly came into its own with the invention of the printing press. Now with the advent of ebooks and digital media, perhaps we may be moving beyond the codex and perhaps the classic form of the index will go away as well. Mr. Duncan discusses all of this and more in great detail and in a lively and amusing style. He also describes how indexes have been used for humor, commentary, polemics and philosophical argument and whether an index should be used as a way into a book or as a post-reading reference tool, or even possibly as substitute for actually reading the underlying book. I never imagined such a rich diversity of form, philosophy and uses in the world of indexes.
The thing that I found most fascinating was that something that I have always taken for granted - that indexes are inappropriate for novels, but that every non-fiction book should have an alphabetical subject index at the end - is not at all as obvious as it seems. Even the idea of alphabetical order took some time to develop, and the idea of a key to subject matter tied to page numbers is uniquely adapted to the codex - a bound book with numbered pages, which is a form that only became widely used in late ancient and early medieval times and then truly came into its own with the invention of the printing press. Now with the advent of ebooks and digital media, perhaps we may be moving beyond the codex and perhaps the classic form of the index will go away as well. Mr. Duncan discusses all of this and more in great detail and in a lively and amusing style. He also describes how indexes have been used for humor, commentary, polemics and philosophical argument and whether an index should be used as a way into a book or as a post-reading reference tool, or even possibly as substitute for actually reading the underlying book. I never imagined such a rich diversity of form, philosophy and uses in the world of indexes.
March 10, 2024
3.5
Pretty sure you'll need an above-average appreciation of indexes to enjoy this book. It doesn't feel like a history for the general audience, judging by the specific humor and all the fun with words (maybe too much of that at times).
That said, I enjoyed this book. It felt well-structured and orderly as it covered several centuries of indexing history (and a surprising amount of drama), along with visuals. Plus, this book has not one, but TWO indexes (!), one computer-generated and one compiled by a human being, which provides an interesting object lesson and some rare indexing humor.
The author does a good job tracing the development of the index from its beginnings, when it wasn't obvious what form a tool like this should take. This issue comes full circle at the end of the book with a discussion of how technology is once again changing the way we find and process information. Fascinating to think about!
Pretty sure you'll need an above-average appreciation of indexes to enjoy this book. It doesn't feel like a history for the general audience, judging by the specific humor and all the fun with words (maybe too much of that at times).
That said, I enjoyed this book. It felt well-structured and orderly as it covered several centuries of indexing history (and a surprising amount of drama), along with visuals. Plus, this book has not one, but TWO indexes (!), one computer-generated and one compiled by a human being, which provides an interesting object lesson and some rare indexing humor.
The author does a good job tracing the development of the index from its beginnings, when it wasn't obvious what form a tool like this should take. This issue comes full circle at the end of the book with a discussion of how technology is once again changing the way we find and process information. Fascinating to think about!
Read
December 30, 2022Lovely lighthearted book on one element of the architecture of the paper book - it acknowledges the digital age, but also acknowledges the indexes he loves belong more to the print age. Indexes are 'about time and knowledge and the relationship between the two'. Also he shows them to be deeply personal, even with their show of neutrality. Indexes suggest ' a spatial relationship', this indicates that. An index cannot be as large as the book itself - it is a part of information science. Abstraction, creating something new. Amongst other things, he describes alphabetical order as something that was seen as an author not taking responsibility for the order of the book. A next step were distinctio's - different perspectives on a phrase, used by preachers about the Bible. A sort of mind map.
Interestingly, and unexpectedly, this book is also an ode to readers - ' not to evolve as readers is as absurd as complaining that a butterfly is not beautiful enough. It is how it is because it has adapted perfectly to its environment'. He gives a good distinction between text and embodiment of text. Must look up the Library conference of 1877, 260 Librarians from all over the world, wishing for a universal index. And it is nice to know that I shared a job (indexing) with Virginia Woolf, among many others.
Interestingly, and unexpectedly, this book is also an ode to readers - ' not to evolve as readers is as absurd as complaining that a butterfly is not beautiful enough. It is how it is because it has adapted perfectly to its environment'. He gives a good distinction between text and embodiment of text. Must look up the Library conference of 1877, 260 Librarians from all over the world, wishing for a universal index. And it is nice to know that I shared a job (indexing) with Virginia Woolf, among many others.
March 21, 2022
I loved this book. It was informative, well written, entertaining, and made me laugh. The author does jump around in the timeline, but he does so in a way that actually helps the reader understand the narrative. His examples flow together in a wonderful sense of play. Don't forget to read both the computer generated index and the real index at the back, lest you miss out on some fun jokes made by the indexer herself.
Read
October 19, 2023DNF at 51%. Not bad, but don’t think it translates well to audiobook. Couldn’t keep up with all the indexing formatting in audio.
March 30, 2023
3.5/5
Fun and interesting read on the birth and evolution of indexes. It made me question aspects of books that we take for granted today: pagination, alphabetical order, etc. There were also some really fun examples of how indexes were used as satirical tools or as artistic mediums throughout history.
Fun and interesting read on the birth and evolution of indexes. It made me question aspects of books that we take for granted today: pagination, alphabetical order, etc. There were also some really fun examples of how indexes were used as satirical tools or as artistic mediums throughout history.
June 10, 2022
This book on indexes not only held me riveted but also made me laugh. But boy does this guy like his em dashes. As expected, the book's own index was wonderfully witty and fun, and I wish my copy weren't overdue at the library so I could spend more time circling around in it.
June 14, 2022
3.5
An interesting book that analyzes different literary tools and people who have influenced the development of the index.
An interesting book that analyzes different literary tools and people who have influenced the development of the index.
April 28, 2022
There are definitely some interesting things getting pored over by Dennis Duncan in his admirably exhaustive history of one of those things most of us take for granted, or literally never, ever think about, the index. Like how in the beginning it took decades (centuries?) of trial and error before people realized that organizing an index in alphabetical order was the way to go (the whole concept of alphabetical order is pretty revolutionary tbh; like everyone just agreed that, yes, this extremely arbitrary sequence is how we all should do it forever). And the fact that the whole hashtag-as-organizing-mechanism was proposed by some rando(ish) dude in a tweet, and the whole world took it to heart. And the fact that people being worried about new technology making us dumber extends all the way back to Socrates complaining that reading something aloud, instead of speaking from memory, was cheating. Stuff like that is fun, but the bulk of Index is devoted to play-by-play rehashings of thankfully long-forgotten literary and political feuds from god knows when, which to me read as if someone in the year 3267 was retelling, in detail, some inane Twitter discourse dispute from this year.
January 12, 2023
Sometimes nonfiction can just be light and fun; it doesn't have to be heavy and full of big ideas.
I had a blast with this book - it's exactly what the subtitle promises - a bookish adventure through history. Duncan clearly has a passion for literature, history, and indexes (and a deep admiration for the many smart humans who manage and index information) and it shows through his humour, excitement at visiting old indexes, and the delight with which he shares historical anecdotes and facts. It's nice to see that humans have been handwringing about inventions in the literary and learning spaces since time immemorial apparently. Google is really just the new "writing is the poor relation of speech" from Socrates's (and Plato's) perspective.
My main critique is that it felt unbalanced historically speaking. We spend the majority of our time in the 11th-19th centuries, and very little exploring the 20th and 21st centuries. I would have liked an additional 10-20 pages (or chapter) talking about indexes in the very tumultuous 20th century. The author does discuss the computational advances, the popularity of Google, and the emerging artificial intelligence efforts to index, but it's significantly shallower in detail compared to the pages spent on satirical indexes of the early 17th century (as an example).
Otherwise, if you have an interest in this area, I recommend picking it up. The introduction and first chapter are a great standalone read if you're looking for just a sampling of this book too.
...and yes, I read the index.
I had a blast with this book - it's exactly what the subtitle promises - a bookish adventure through history. Duncan clearly has a passion for literature, history, and indexes (and a deep admiration for the many smart humans who manage and index information) and it shows through his humour, excitement at visiting old indexes, and the delight with which he shares historical anecdotes and facts. It's nice to see that humans have been handwringing about inventions in the literary and learning spaces since time immemorial apparently. Google is really just the new "writing is the poor relation of speech" from Socrates's (and Plato's) perspective.
My main critique is that it felt unbalanced historically speaking. We spend the majority of our time in the 11th-19th centuries, and very little exploring the 20th and 21st centuries. I would have liked an additional 10-20 pages (or chapter) talking about indexes in the very tumultuous 20th century. The author does discuss the computational advances, the popularity of Google, and the emerging artificial intelligence efforts to index, but it's significantly shallower in detail compared to the pages spent on satirical indexes of the early 17th century (as an example).
Otherwise, if you have an interest in this area, I recommend picking it up. The introduction and first chapter are a great standalone read if you're looking for just a sampling of this book too.
...and yes, I read the index.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2022
When I told my wife and daughter I was listening to a book about the index, they were dumbstruck. Confusion and fear flitted across their faces as they wondered if I had lost my wits. Was I joking? Finally, my daughter said, "why?"
Then they laughed and laughed and laughed.
Over the last five years, I was asked to proofread one index and do a more substantive edit of another. I was in over my head in both cases, and I'm not sure how much I improved either. The experiences left me with a healthy respect and curiosity for the art and science of indexing.
Then along came Index, A History of the.
It was chock full of amusing and informative anecdotes, not just about the birth and development of the index, but also about books, bookmaking, and printing. One favorite: Late 18th century Whigs and Tories weaponized the index, lampooning their political opponents' works by adding funny indexes after the fact.
This is a relatively quick listen, and I expect an even quicker read. I can't recommend the audiobook, mainly because of the numerous instances when the narrator has to read examples of indexes, including endless page numbers. With a physical book, the reader can take in this information at a glance and move on. The audiobook listener is forced to attest to every page number. The British narrator, Neil Gardner, is a pro and handles this easily, but much more jarring were the instances when he felt compelled to attempt an American accent, which made everybody sound like a slightly intoxicated Texan in a B-movie.
Then they laughed and laughed and laughed.
Over the last five years, I was asked to proofread one index and do a more substantive edit of another. I was in over my head in both cases, and I'm not sure how much I improved either. The experiences left me with a healthy respect and curiosity for the art and science of indexing.
Then along came Index, A History of the.
It was chock full of amusing and informative anecdotes, not just about the birth and development of the index, but also about books, bookmaking, and printing. One favorite: Late 18th century Whigs and Tories weaponized the index, lampooning their political opponents' works by adding funny indexes after the fact.
This is a relatively quick listen, and I expect an even quicker read. I can't recommend the audiobook, mainly because of the numerous instances when the narrator has to read examples of indexes, including endless page numbers. With a physical book, the reader can take in this information at a glance and move on. The audiobook listener is forced to attest to every page number. The British narrator, Neil Gardner, is a pro and handles this easily, but much more jarring were the instances when he felt compelled to attempt an American accent, which made everybody sound like a slightly intoxicated Texan in a B-movie.
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