There are several superb books on the history of book design: Joseph Blumenthal, Art of the Printed Book 1455-1955; Norma Levarie, The Art and History of Books; S. H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing; and Warren Chappell and Robert Bringhurst, A Short History of the Printed Word. Alas Alan Bartrams Five Hundred Years of Book Design is uninformative, unscholarly, and unpleasant. The analytical level is casual, adolescent. Readers will learn little about books from the thin text. The photographs of the great books, taken at the British Library, are murky and out of focus. How did Yale University Press come to publish this turkey?
