The Book on the Bookshelf

The Book on the Bookshelf, by Henry Petroski

An engrossing history of how books have been stored and organized over the centuries, starting from the time of handmade, handwritten books which were stored in locked chests or chained to the shelves, and moving up to the engineering and design of modern libraries (private and public). A fascinating appendix discusses 21 different ways of organizing books in a collection. Any booklover will find much to appreciate in this work by a bibliophilic engineer, the author of a previous book on the history of the pencil.
-Richard