There is only one strong paragraph in this mercifully short, dissatisfying book...a quotation from Borges.When you reach that paragraph you straighten up like a passenger whose car has just passed from a rutted dirt track to a paved road. Constant homage is paid to various mentors and proteges in that "I'll footnote you if you footnote me" way.A certain kind of French cul de sac...if only they esteemed their subject as much as one another.Sample sentence: "The multifaceted return of the author in critical problematics takes us back to the question that Foucault posed...." Daddy are we there yet?

Both of the reviewers below are breaking Amazon's reviewer rules. The older review talks about the *author* as distinct from the *book* when he/she speculates about the author's motives in adding footnotes. The second review, by Sean, argues with the first review. Another rule violation. I'm giving the book 3 stars because the system requires me to rate it, and I haven't read it.

I want to respond to the obnoxious review that vives@earthlink.net made of this book. I found The Order of Books to be informative, exciting, lucid, and memorable. The implication that it is stylistically opaque or excessively academic is unjust and untrue. This book says a great deal about the history of reading and its social settings. Any student, bibliophile, or patron of libraries will enjoy and profit from it.

After I have read more about the French Revolution I will try to read the book again. I have read The Comming of the French Revolution by George Lefebvre and enjoyed it.

M. Chartier has written an intellectual, tightly argued work that has been greatly beneficial to my understanding of the revolution in France. His notion that the ideas of the Enlightenment influenced revolutionary thought indirectly through a "demystification" of the monarchy is very intriguing. This book did much to make me question some of my long-held presumptions about the French Revolution.

The content is wonderful! The book provides much insight to different reading practices and how they change through the years. But...

1. The footnotes need to be on the same page as the text. It is hard to keep your place when you constantly have to flip to the back of the book. Also, if the notes were on the same page, I could see whether or not I needed to read the footnote for more information.

2. Provide tranlations of foreign quotations. I don't know about you, but it has been a while since I had a foreign language course.

3. Some of the chapters could be better edited. For example, in chapter 8 ("Protestant Reformations and Reading"), contributing author Jean-Francois Gilmont needs to pinpoint dates more clearly. He mentions a twenty-year span in which the separation of the printed book from the hand-lettered book was finally completed, but says it happened soon after Luther preached against indulgences (p. 214). If Luther talked to the Archbishop of Mainz in 1518 about indulgences, isn't it logical that it was not in 1540 that the separation was complete?

4. The style of writing seems to jump from readable to dry. I know each chapter is by a different author, but is there any way there could be more fluidity from chapter to chapter?

This book is a good idea. But there is room for litterature that can tell the same in a more lively way with far fewer words. ...or can tell four time as much with the same number of pages. - The language of most of the authors is such that you wonder WHY they have chocen to say what they attempt to tell in such flowery ways. After a paragraph it's hard to remember "What did he try to tell me now." It's easier to think: "Yes. I can see that you have learnt a hole lot of words, and adjevtives in particular." - I have found litterature about the same topic, put in a different language that manage to do this far better. In fact I've found public reports that with regards to the ability to convey a thought is far more readable.

I had a much harder time getting into this volume than the two previous ones. It is far more limited geographically in that about 90% of it is about France and it is also edited rather poorly: many of the chapters are chock full of vague generalizations that require far more historical knowledge than I had to evaluate them (my failing, perhaps, but also an indication of the level of the book). Finally, many of the chapters were far less fun than the ones in the previous two volumes.

That being said, there are absolutely wonderful nuggets embedded throughout the book. This is, afterall, the era when the individual emerges en masse from the "community" mentality of the middle ages, as the absolutist state (and its embryonic legal system) replaces the more relationship-based bonds of feudal communties. This had innumerable consequences, including the development of public schools on a widespread basis and a sense of justice as administered by the state rather than by a feudal lord who demanded personal loyalty.

THere are also many episodes within this that make for great reading. For example, there is a whole chapter on the development of accepted manners for the middle classes and even below, based on those of the court but also on books on etiquette such as one written by Erasmus himself, which astounded me as I learned its various editions were influential for over 300 years on wuch topics as acceptable table manners. THere were also chapters on charivari - a kind of moralistic razzing of newlyweds that combined extortion and youthful exuberance, carried out as they were (sometimes for months) by amoral thugs! Even the notion of childhood - of the child having a distinctive personality with his/her own requirements and needs - was developed in this period. ANd of course, there is the growth of the practive of friendship by choice, so rare in the middle ages, rather than via kinship ties or feudal obligation, which had subordinated most feelings to the survival of the extended clan.

Nonetheless, these delightful chapters are buried in many dull and poorly written ones that were a terrible slog to get through. I was very disappointed by this, having loved the volumes on the ancient world and the middle ages. Perhaps it was marked by the death of the founding editor. I will try the later volumes, but worry they will not measure up. The title is also misleading: this volume is less about the Renaissance than what followed, that is, the period of religious wars and the development of absolutism.

REcommended to those willing to make the effort, but not for the casual reader.

This book was assigned to my graduate historiography class a few years ago and I found it to be the most challenging and frustrating book I've ever tried to read ("tried" being the operative word). Most of the sentences are so long and complex one must read it over and over again and almost word by word to get some meaning from it. That presents a difficult task when a student has mountains of other material to read. All my classmates complained about it and even the professor admitted Chartier's writing style was difficult to grasp. It is actually a rather short book, but I dreaded the duty of opening it up and mucking through the long, complex sentences. At first I thought it was a problem with translation, but translator Lydia Cochrane explained in her notes on translation that the French version was just as challenging.

The part of the book that I did find interesting was Chartier's discussion of Michel Foucault's views on the use of "origin" in historical works and Foucault's belief that forces in history respond to haphazard conflicts. I remember quoting a 75-word sentence in my term paper (my computer kept warning me of a run-on), since I certainly was unable to paraphrase.

Those readers who have spent decades reading historical works and would welcome the challenge will probably find this work fascinating (as did my professor). Others, like myself, who are not prepared for such an effort and who believe that clarity in presenting one's ideas is almost as important as the ideas themselves will want to pass on this book.