Unsurprisingly, in reading Duncan’s book, I began with the index. Such a book might have a quite self-conscious one, you’d think. Although the indexer, Paula Clarke Bain, ...

The distinction between the more interpretive subject index and the more objective word index remains important throughout Duncan’s book. There’s more fun to be had with the subject index ...

INDEX, A HISTORY OF THE A Bookish Adventure From Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age By Dennis Duncan Illustrated. 344 pages. W.W. Norton & Company. $30. Before reading “Index, A History of ...

The book skews toward the literary, but anyone interested in the 2,200-year journey to quickly find what one needs in a book will be enlightened, and will never again take an index for granted ...

INDEX, A HISTORY OF THE A Bookish Adventure From Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age By Dennis Duncan. Over the last quarter-century, the book as physical organism has been increasingly ...

"Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age" explores the development of those things in the back of a book that many of us turn to for reference.