“It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams...Through it, God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men."

On the 550th anniversary of his death, Henry Bemis Books remembers a man who changed the world:




John Man, Gutenberg: How One Man Remade The World With Words (John Wiley, 1st ed. 1st printing, 2002). ISBN 0-471-21823-5. A truly remarkable exercise in scholarship, this book seems to have run to ground every shred of documentary evidence to have survived through five centuries of European history to document the life of the man who invented moveable type. The detail is fascinating: how Gutenberg raised money and held at bay investors who wanted to interfere; how he tried to control the spread of his invention in an age without intellectual property laws; and how  the number of books in Europe went from a single wagon-load in 1455 to “tens of thousands, the individual volumes to millions” only fifty years later. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, very good condition. HBB price: $15.