Dennis Duncan's "Index: A History of the" is a delightful journey through the often overlooked yet indispensable tool at the back of every book. With wit, charm, and scholarly precision, Duncan navigates the curious path of the index from its humble beginnings in thirteenth-century Europe to its ubiquitous presence in the digital age.

Duncan's exploration of the index's transition from print media to digital searches offers valuable insights into the ongoing evolution of information technology and its impact on our reading habits. "Index: A History of the" is a must-read for anyone with an interest in book history, language, or the evolution of information technology.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Excerpt from a longer article:

Whether exploring favorite authors or interesting aspects of language and knowledge, several new books provide breadth and depth to the study of literature, history, and speech.
...
Index, A History of the
Dennis Duncan, 2022, W.W. Norton & Company
Themes: History, Language, Books
Book history fans will be enthralled by this fascinating history of the index. Duncan traces the little-known highlights of its design, use, and changes over time.
Take-aways: Students will connect with how the index has evolved from print media into digital searches.
...
Whether helping educators keep up-to-date in their subject-areas, promoting student reading in the content-areas, or simply encouraging nonfiction leisure reading, teacher librarians need to be aware of the best new titles across the curriculum and how to activate life-long learning. - Annette Lamb

This was a really fun read - for a nerd anyways. The idea of writing a whole book on the history of the index is so niche but also a tool used so globally, that its history is extremely needed. Exceptionally researched and rather witty (the use of the index for this book is charming). Highly recommend to anyone with an interest in book history.

This was an entertaining and informative read. I found myself sharing what I learned from this book with those around me. I recommend it to fans of good and highly readable non-fiction.

Happy to include this title in “Books for the Bookish,” the bibliophile-themed gift list for avid readers, as part of the holiday books package in Zoomer magazine’s Zed Books section.

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan is a playful history of the humble index and its outsized effect on our reading lives. 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.

Index, A History of the: covers a topic that I had given little thought to, aside from how useful a good index can be when I need it. Like all parts of human history, personality, politic, and power all had a role to play in any steps forward made in indexing. I really like that the author made an effort to give a well balanced look at how indexes came about and evolved over the years while including a look at the rivalries, drama, and humor that can be found along the way. I also like that he acknowledged the hard work that goes into creating a proper subject index, in the past and still today, and how many of the people that do the work get little to no credit for the labor intensive process. I greatly enjoyed the read and learned a great deal. I think those that value indexes, and are interested in bookish history of any kind, will greatly enjoy this book. For those that are interested, there is a very well done audiobook version of this title as well.

When working as a scholar I used indexes constantly. Now, as a more leisurely reader O seldom think about them much. They seem such a logical addition to a book that it's easy to assume they have always existed. But indexes, like tables of content and page numbers are somewhat late additions and have had their share of detractors as well as supporters over time
This is one of those great nonfiction books written by a true scholar who starts with the ordinary and pulls us into the extraordinary. Lived it.

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.

Not everyone will be interested in the history of the index, but there are some word nerds who will. Do you love books about books? Do you love learning about the history of books? Then you will likely love this! I have was intrigued when I learned about the dictionary wars so I had to know how this deep dive stacked up. The history of the index is filled with just as much politics, arguments, and competitions as the dictionary wars. This book is super niche and at times a bit *unexciting* but I feel like it would be embraced by most of the Bookstagram community.

Index: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age (nonfiction) by Dennis Duncan is a glorious celebration of the humble index, both a useful textual tool and “a perfectly-sized nook for the deployment of snark” in the hands of some indexers. The advent of the index around 1230, its rival methodologies, and its effect on how readers read may sound like dry stuff to some, but Duncan appeals to his readers with smart research and a witty style, making Index a true ‘crossover’ title. Illustrations help.

Books, specifically non-fiction books, are composed of many parts. There is the cover, the table of contents, maybe a forward or introduction, the main body of the text, the notes or references, maybe additional sources and then, finally, the index. The last item, the Index is what Dennis Duncan is specifically interested in.

An index plays a critical part in the book when properly done by letting the reader easily find a name, an event, or a piece of information quickly without having to reread the whole book. Dennis Duncan opens his history with a J. G. Ballard short story entitled "The Index" which supposedly is the only remaining part of an autobiography. It tells a story using keywords, subheadings, and page numbers to let the reader piece together the tale.This opening leads into the importance of alphabetization of the index. Duncan then jumps to the origin of the index which came about with the rise of universities and mendicant orders of preachers and their desire to access their material easily. And the index came in two flavors - concordance versus subject/word versus concept. But to be truly useful, the index needs page numbers and there is a nicely done chapter on how that relationship developed. The growth of indexing created an argument among scholars regarding what is more important - the text or the map of the text, i.e. the index. People came to blows over this. Not to mention that you need to be very careful who you let index your book since political disputes, not to mention scholarly arguments have been carried out in the indexes of various volumes (Swift and Macaulay are among the luminaries mentioned in this chapter). Then there is the crazy case of fiction with indexes which leads into a discussion on indexes for periodicals. Print indexes lead to search engines which can act as a universal index except that not everything is digitized yet. Also, what do you do when the electric is out? You can always pull up your printed book and indulge yourself.

If you are interested in the format and composition of books rather than just the contents of books, read Index, A History of the and enjoy the adventure!

The audience for this book is probably very niche but I found to be pretty interesting. I was particularly interested in reading about the ancient ways of indexing and the growth of alphabetical order. I definitely learned a few things and sometimes that is all I ask of books!

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review

Index, A History of the explores the evolution of the well known and referenced index that we currently find at the back of most nonfiction books. Tracing the history from the Romans to Google, Duncan reveals how the tool has changed and the ways in which it's been valued (or not) through the ages.

I ended up picking this one up because I'm often curious about the history of some of the smaller things we sometimes take for granted and indexes (or indices, if you prefer), certainly fall into that category. It was interesting to see the index traced back to the Library of Alexandria though little valued until much later in its history. And it was amusing to see the 19th century writers use it as a tool not for research but for satire which brought attention to bad writing by political rivals.

But I didn't realize going in just how academic this particular approach would be. I was expecting more of a popular history that sets the stage and the level of this is really more geared towards students of classics and literature. The writing has a dry sense of humor but it's fairly dense and makes some assumptions about what the reader already knows and doesn't hold your hand.

Overall, I'd recommend this to anyone who's very curious about the history of literature and the index in particular but maybe not to those uninterested in a more academic text. I enjoyed parts of it but it wasn't quite what I was expecting or in the style of what I prefer from my nonfiction.

This book is a very detailed history of the Index. I enjoyed the idea of hearing more about something that is so indispensable that we don't even think about. In many cases the index can be more important than the table of contents in a book. I know I use my favorite cookbook's index a lot. Index, A History of The is a lot to slog through with images of early indexes (he even explains why it's "indexes" and not "indices") and a lot of history. I thought I would be more interested in this history but it did get a bit mired in the details (which, yes, I know, is the reason for an index to begin with). That being said, anyone who read and enjoyed "A Place for Everything" by Judith Flanders. would enjoy this book as well.

From the clever title to the brilliant photographs to the remarkably enthralling content, this superb book really shines! Oh, how I enjoyed the wit, depth of research and information and sucked it up like a sponge. Dennis Duncan has clearly meticulously explored the dustiest corners to detail history from parchment and papyrus to Google, not only of indexing but also page numbering, spine labeling, marginalia, pilcrow (my new favourite word which I used in conversation today!) and alphabetizing.

Indexing is more complex than I had expected and the knowledge I learned makes me feel smarter, akin to learning a new language. Duncan details reasons for indexing, Pliny the Elder's table of contents, a special art exhibit in New York, brilliant alphabetical acrostics in Lamentations, Robert Cawdrey's first published English dictionary and Cicero's scroll labels. Duncan writes about publishing, Langton chapters, Grosseteste's symbols (wow!), the role of friars, the relatable Stendahl Syndrome, Henry Fielding's chapter breaks, John Lutton's painstaking diligence, Poole's life-changing work, Virginia Woolf's views of the matter, Sherlock Holmes' contributions, mass production and eReaders. The photographs and illustrations enable the reader to envision so much of what he explains.

In addition to the above, the most fascinating and amusing descriptions to me include those of rival spats and jibes within indexes, mock indexes and even a non-apology for not including an index. Well done.

Those with an academic slant with interest in the written word and publishing as well as those who care about the origin of indexes really ought to read this.

My sincere thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this inspiring and mind blowing book. The amount of information I learned delights me to no end!

Index, A History of the
by Dennis Duncan
Pub Date: February 15, 2022
W.W. Norton
First of all, I am a great candidate to be a reader of this book! I'm a librarian. 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.
Thanks to W.W. Norton and NetGalley for the ARC of this book. There is plenty to love in this book.
I highly recommend it! To the people like me, this could become the nonfiction Book of the YEAR!

5 STARS

Any scholar or librarian will tell you, once you start to accumulate information, you’re going to need a way to find the bit you need in the inevitable mountain of clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, parchment codexes, and all the other written and digital texts that followed. Human memory is good, but its been centuries since it was possible to read everything. So it’s no surprise to me and other nerds that indexes have been around since at least the beginning of the common era to help us find that one bit in that one book that we read that one time. In Index, A History of the, by Dennis Duncan takes us on a journey through jotted notes, to the first indexes, to mock indexes, to the massive digital databases that run operations like Google.

The first indexes, according to Duncan, did double duty as memory aids and tables of content. Duncan quotes a letter from Pliny the Elder to the emperor at the time, letting him know that he doesn’t have to bother reading Pliny’s encyclopedia; he can just browse the index instead. But it’s a long way from Pliny’s index to where we are now. Duncan takes trips through alphabetical order, how to accurately indicate locations when people keep making the books different sizes, and how detailed the index should be so that it’s not as big as the original book. So much about the index seems intuitive, because we’ve always had them, but some of the oldest extant indexes we have include instructions about how to read and use an index.

One recurring theme in Index is the surprising amount of vitriol people have expressed about how indexes make things too easy! Just like the recurring arguments about how writing is worse than memorization (Socrates in the Phaedrus) or how whatever that other person is doing isn’t real reading, there have been a surprising number of people who think that using the index is cheating. They fret that students will read the indexes instead of the book. Duncan quotes a lot of witty men sneering at “index-learners.” (It was a sick burn for the 1600s.) From my perspective in the twenty-first century, I would respond to these learned men that indexes are a necessary key to finding anything these days. The libraries we have now would blow their bewigged minds.

Over the weekend, I had to work very hard every time I talked to a family member or a friend to not read parts of this book to them. I was fascinated and highly entertained by every chapter of index-y goodness served up by Duncan. I realize that this book is for academic nerds, and not everyone is going to enjoy it the way I did. But you guys, this book is engrossing! And full of index jokes! Which are totally a thing!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

Who knew that a book about indexing could be so interesting and fun to read.? The author finds humor in the arcane and some of the anecdotes are priceless. I never really thought about how indexes came to be and that there were so many ways to index. We take them for granted and now i will appreciate them more.

I read this as an ARC from Netgalley.com.

This is a charming book about the history of indexing, that is, the recording of what and where a topic is in a written work. The troubles begin with figuring out how to do that! Do you choose alphabetically? If so, which alphabet? How do you index poetry- by topic or first line? Are they meant to be straitlaced, or editorialized, like the index wars of the 18th century? Duncan takes us through the ages as authors and readers alike change how their indexes are formatted to suit the needs of their time. I'd recommend this for anyone interested in the history of literature, linguistics, or cultural history.

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 grudgingly accepts Tables Of Contents as a kind of index, but will also show how tawdry they can be too. 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 Duncan's deep love of the subject shines brightly and definitely contributed to the perfection of the design of this book.

I admit, I am certainly the target audience for this book so I may be a bit biased but I was overjoyed by every turn of every page of this book.

Thank you so much to netgalley and Dennis Duncan for providing an e-copy for me to experience and share my honest opinion. I will be geeking out over this book for the foreseeable future!