This book is an incredible resource to artists creating bookworks or any form of artist's books. Numerous professors in Columbia College's Book & Paper Arts MFA program use excerpts for readings and they always add insight and information to the recipients. Additionally, the readings (chapters) are not so complex as to not be able to absorb the information.

It is outrageous that the [$$$] book is being sold for [$$$] here, just because it's out of print. Book artists are not bankers!

A landmark book. Does double duty as a showcase of some of the most incredible books of the century and puts forth some much needed critical groundwork. Johanna Drucker has done the world of book arts a huge service by initiating discussions about the definitions and categories that are necessary to formulate a critical language for this art.

The theory parts are not heavy-handed, but spring naturally from the way she has decided to structure the material for presentation. Not many books are a reference, an inspiration, a sweeping survey, a seed for further criticism, and a flower of criticism in their own right. This one is all that and more.

Your expectations of this book might be quite high if you've been wishing in vain for something like it. Even so, you will not be disappointed, because there is nothing else like it.

When I finished it, I flipped back through the pages once, pressed the covers gently together and whispered to the book, "Well done, Johanna, well done, indeed."

This excellent book goes over the different styles of artist books. Each chapter is an in-depth look at each style, with plenty of examples. The material is well-organized and easy to read without sacrificing academic rigor. This book has introduced me to the various approaches in making artist books. This book would be good either for the artist book aficionado, the art history student interested in artist books, or the serious book maker.

Publisher's Weekly (February 19, 2001) notes: For 10 years, from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s, artist and designer Susan Bee and Mira Schor, a painter on the faculty of the Parsons School of Deign, edited a magazine they had founded, devoted to "visual pleasure with a culturally activcist edge." Bee andSchor have culled 40 of the most representative essays, reviews, critical forums, interviews and "musings" for M/E/AN/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory and Criticism, which takes its name from their magazine. Book artist Johanna Drucker contributes a foreword. Alison Knowles, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Tuttle, Nanacy K. Miller, Rackstraw Downes, Joanna Frueh, Jerry Saltz and many others weigh in. The book makes for a fascinating snapshot of a tansitional era in American art, one whose terms and preoccupations are still being reworked and worked out.

This is a great book that talks about Typography in the early avant-garde age; Futurism, Dada, Cubism. It discusses the relationship between visual art, typography and poetry. It's a great reference on experimental typography.

Reading--not to mention reviewing--a single
chapter of Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic
Labyrinth: The Letters in History and
Imagination is enough to convince any reader
that Drucker's work is aptly named. For
instance, Chapter 5 focuses first on the
script of Medieval documents, then on the
decorated letters of the same period, and on
to runes, alchemical alphabets, and the "Ars
Combinatoria." This is no easy journey, and
the twists, turns, and switchbacks are enough
to stagger even the most fearless of
polymaths. It is indeed a labyrinth--but one
worth the effort. The illustrations
(albeit all in black and white and/or blue)
make this book worthy of attention. But
leafing through the book only to look at the
illustrations would be to miss Drucker's
point--the alphabet is a sinuous vine,
twisting its way around the entire history of
civilization, and it continues to wind its
way into human imagination in the present.

In Chapter 5 (or would "V" be more
appropriate?), Drucker begins by reminding us
that ". . . in the centuries following the
decline of the Roman Empire . . . [t]he
activity of writing shifted emphasis--from the
carving of monumental inscriptions,writing
of classical poetry, and recording of legal
and biblical texts--to the copying of
religious and classical texts within the
province of religious communities" (94).
This is an example of the subtle way in
which Drucker encourages her readers to
remember that "Imagination" is part of the
title of her book--upon reading those
words I was immediately reminded of Eco's
NAME OF THE ROSE, and I'm sure many of
Drucker's statements inspire such thoughts
in the minds of other readers. After
discussing several scripts (or "hands") of
the Middle Ages, Drucker then walks readers
through the different styles of letter
decoration as illustrated by several
beautiful examples of medieval documents.

Drucker then leads the reader into a brief
discussion of runes and ogham which began as
legitimate forms of writing but came to have
"magical properties" (116), as have other
forms of alphabet throughout history. Drucker
then briefly discusses missionary and
alchemical alphabets, missionary alphabets
having been developed to transcribe holy texts
into the languages spoken by peoples with whom
the missionary worked and alchemical alphabets
being ". . . a code to order elements in
alchemical operations and . . . to conceal
the knowledge of secret processes in an
unreadable and arcane form" (120).

Next, Drucker performs one of the many
switchbacks she negotiates in her text by
discussing ancient and celestial alphabets,
celestial alphabets being "derived from
observation of configurations of stars in the
heavens which can be 'read' as a form of
sacred writing" (125). Her final discussion
in Chapter 5 is reserved for the 13th Century
Catalan Raymond Llull, whose work later
resulted in the "Ars Combinatoria," a
systematization of systems so that they
functioned as an abstract network of
knowledge and process" (127).

Drucker has an unfortunate habit of using
difficult terminology several times before
defining/explaining it for her less erudite
reader (for instance, the word uncial is
used several times before it is finally
defined on page 94); however, this
compendium of alphabet history--Eurocentric
though it is--exhibits awareness of the
alphabets of non-Western cultures and exhibits
the depth of Drucker's understanding of her
subject. She invites the reader to explore
arcane subject areas connected with alphabets
and, in many cases, provides the material for
wonderful flights of the imagination.

In Chapter Two, Drucker takes the reader on a trip back in time as she traces the evolution of writing systems. The trip begins with Egyptian hieroglyphics (~3500 BC), continues through Semitic inscriptions and Phoenician letters in the Mediterranean, to modern European alphabets. While a single, direct line tracing the alphabet back to one source does not emerge, the reader is beguiled by the mysteries of alphabetic history: the adaptability to other languages of the alphabet developed by Semitic speakers, the simultaneous development of ancient writing systems, and the search for connections among different writing systems. The reader is introduced to major historians in the field of epigraphy and their search for origins of the alphabet by painstakingly comparing scripts of different writing systems, looking for relationships among them. Drucker emphasizes the importance of archaeological evidence on the study of ancient writings. The progress (and accuracy!) of alphabetic analysis was greatly aided by the confirmation of archaeological discoveries. This chapter includes many illustrations of ancient writing systems and an excellent chart depicting the basic lines of alphabet development over the past 5,000 years. Drucker demonstrates vast knowledge about the alphabet and conveys this information in a very scholarly manner. Her book is intended for an informed, educated audience. Additionally, Drucker has great respect for her subject matter, so that the reader comes away with a sense of awe and admiration towards this ingenious human accomplishment.

A reader reviewed this book by Joanna Drucker as not being enough informative on the alphabet history in itself. It's unfair and not informate to review the book like this. Its manifesto is all in the evocative title: The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. Joanna Drucker traced an history of the alphabet from the very beginning talking about the interesting and often left apart complex variety of meanings of the letterform, embodied by mystery, symbolic, alchemic, religious, esotheric and many other values, offering an unique showcase of the history of writing. Saying the book is unsatisfying equals to say you have not even read the title, which explains quite well its content!

I really enjoyed these essays, which range from theory to personal reflection. When discussing specific projects that she has been involved with, it's fascinating they way you are drawn in to feel like you're seeing the behind-the-scenes of the creation process. The treatments of issues of theory were cogent, and well presented. I confess that I dog-eared many a page. The moments of personal reflection were at times almost too personal to bear...not what you might expect from a collection of essays, but welcome to this reader, nonetheless.