Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan

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Index,-A-History-of-the:-A-Bookish-Adventure-from-Medieval-Manuscripts-to-the-Digital-Age-by-Dennis-Duncan: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.