Keith Houston

A charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the written word, weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography.

Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks

Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-401) and index.

A Cover-to-cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time

The Book

“Everybody who has ever read a book will benefit from the way Keith Houston explores the most powerful object of our time. And everybody who has read it will agree that reports of the book’s death have been greatly exaggerated.”—Erik Spiekermann, typographer We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages—of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity, and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. Sure to delight book lovers of all stripes with its lush, full-color illustrations, The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity’s most important—and universal—information technology.

The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time

What does the hashtag have to do with ancient Romans and Isaac Newton? How did a dash almost bring down the British establishment? Why is the @ symbol called a strudel in Hebrew and rollmop herring in Czech? How do you express sarcasm with a punctuation mark? This book is all about the symbols we use every day, and the incredible stories behind why they mean what they mean. Taking in ancient graffiti, Medieval shorthand, New York advertising men, great orators, rogues, rebels and pioneers, Shady Characters reveals how a series of strange signs, shapes and squiggles have (often literally) shaped our language. 'Engaging, colourful . . . Keith Houston brings to life a history of ingenuity and imagination.' Rose Wild, The Times 'You have a treat in store.' Ben Yagoda, author of How to Not Write Bad 'Refreshing, fascinating.' Jon Day, Daily Telegraph 'Might make you look at books - in print or online - in an entirely new way.' Andrew Robinson, Nature

Ampersands, Interrobangs and Other Typographical Curiosities

Shady Characters

Ciemne typki. Sekretne życie znaków typograficznych

The hidden history of the pocket calculator--a device that ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, and went with us to the moon--and the mathematicians, designers, and inventors who brought it to life.

The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

Empire of the Sum

The hidden history of the pocket calculator—a device that ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, and went with us to the moon—and the mathematicians, designers, and inventors who brought it to life. Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator. In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. Empire of the Sum will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age.

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

“An absolutely fascinating blend of history, design, sociology, and cultural poetics—highly recommended.”—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings A charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the written word, Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography. Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)—which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible—or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&). From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (?) and as divisive as the dash (—). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts. Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.

Keith Houston

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