Index, A History of the

More fun than I thought it was going to be! It's clear that the author is a lover of books, information management, and history. Following the history of the index, Duncan focuses on a number of historical figures and also touches on the history of publishing, literature, scholarship, politics, and religion in earlier eras. I admit to being surprised by how much of the story of the index was much, much older than I thought. The subtitle's inclusion of the ‘digital age' is in practice more of an end cap argument regarding the need to acknowledge the skill that a human brings to providing subject indexes of value. While automated ‘concordances' may offer readers the ease of finding a word anywhere in a digital document, they have less value as a reference/educational resource than a subject index, which these days may begin with the aid of software, but requires a human to do the deep reading computers are not (currently) capable of. Having thoroughly enjoyed the saucier side of index  history, I would LOVE to see satirical indexes make a come back as a literary form, and I am intrigued by the nascent possibilities an earlier time suggested for poetical indexes. As always, the writer's passion for the subject matter in a work of non-fiction makes all the difference.