Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Six of the best recent hidden histories

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Alexandra Silverman tagged six top recent hidden histories, including:
Shady Characters: The Secret Live of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks, by Keith Houston

Fresh, arcane, fascinating, divisive, and continuously evolving—Houston’s characters, including the asterisk (*), at sign (@) and pilcrow (¶), are revealed to have truly vibrant hidden histories. Houston fell down the punctuation rabbit hole after reading Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography and climbed his way out via careful research of typographical marks “from ancient Greece to the Internet,” producing this polished, entertaining, and properly punctuated book. Don’t take my word for it: Julia Turner, Slate’s deputy editor, endorsed it in a recent gabfest, and film critic Dana Stevens nearly snatched it out of her hands.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue