This is the sort of book that I would never have thought to look for, but once I saw it, I had to read it. It's a little melancholy to reflect on the decline of mechanical printing, but it gave birth to our electronic fonts, and still delights us in all it's variety, especially in picture books.

About the ghoti=fish mentioned by another reviewer: According to Wikipedia: "The first confirmed use of ghoti is in a letter dated 11 December 1855 from Charles Ollier to Leigh Hunt. On the third page of the letter, Ollier explains, "My son William has hit upon a new method of spelling Fish." Ollier then demonstrates the rationale, "So that ghoti is fish." The letter credits ghoti to William Ollier Jr., born 1824." ( )

Pretty good book about the people behind type or typography innovations. ( )

Entirely too focused on the lives and personalities of the font designers rather than the fonts themselves. Couldn't take it, was not what I was looking for from this, somebody may be interested in Stanley Morrison's love life but it isn't me. ( )

Another of those quasi-random non-fiction titles I only picked up because I happened to run across it on Scribd.

An entertaining and fairly rapid romp through the history of type design from Gutenberg to Aldus Pagemaker, written by a designer but tending to tell us less about the aesthetics and more about the personalities of the people who created Baskerville, Caslon, Bodoni and all the rest of the famous typefaces. Fun, but not something you would read if you had a serious professional interest in the subject. Some of his historical interludes are a bit unconvincing, and there were a couple of places, irrelevant to the real subject of the book, where he was obviously filling in from memory and hadn't checked his facts (e.g. he repeats the false attribution of the famous ghoti=fish canard to George Bernard Shaw). ( )

Scattered history of typography, dipping in and out from Gutenberg to the nineties and beyond. Lots of fascinating bits of information, both informative and inspirational. Makes me want to know even more. ( )