EVERY BOOK ITS READER The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World - Signed Limited Edition by Nicholas A. Basbanes - 2005

HarperCollins, 2005. 1st Edition. Hardcover. As New/As New. Still in publisher's original shrinkwrap. This is the signed limited edition one of only 250 copies published. The binding is Smyth-sewn and handcrafted in Franconia cloth. Attractively illustrated with fifty photographs, the book itself is stamped with 22-carat gold on the spine, wrapped in a dust jacket, and housed in a matching, custom-designed slipcase. This edition is limited to just 250 copies, signed and numbered by the author on a colophon page printed for this edition. Never before has a work by Nicholas Basbanes been so lavishly produced. Fans of his earlier work, like the National Book Critics Circle Award nominated A Gentle Madness, or the critically acclaimed A Splendor of Letters, will enjoy Every Book Its Reader, an exploration of book culture and the ways books have nudged the course of history and influenced the way we see the world. Inspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the printed word, Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world, works that have both nudged the course of history and fired the imagination of countless influential people. In his fifth work to examine a specific aspect of book culture, Basbanes also asks what we can know about such figures as John Milton, Edward Gibbon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Adams, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Henry James, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller -- even the notorious Marquis de Sade and Adolf Hitler -- by knowing what they have read. He shows how books that many of these people have consulted, in some cases annotated with their marginal notes, can offer tantalizing clues to the evolution of their character and the development of their thought. Taking the concept one step further, Basbanes profiles some of the most articulate readers of our time -- David McCullough, Harold Bloom, Robert Fagles, Robert Coles, Helen Vendler, Elaine Pagels, Daniel Aaron, Christopher Ricks, Matthew Bruccoli, and Perri Klass among them -- who discuss such relevant concepts as literary canons, classic works in translation, the timelessness of poetry, the formation of sacred texts, and the power of literature to train physicians, nurture children, and rehabilitate criminal offenders. "Basbanes has a deep and abiding passion for books -- a joyful addiction, " Dan Smith wrote in the Toronto Star of Patience & Fortitude, characterizing his body of work as "part travelogue, part scholarship, and all story. " The tradition continues with Every Book Its Reader.