Publishers Weekly
★ 11/15/2021
Duncan (coeditor, Book Parts), a lecturer in English at University College London, mixes humor and scholarship to brilliant effect in this accessible deep dive into the history of indexes. Contending that indexes have had a profound yet overlooked impact on the evolution of human knowledge, he highlights key innovations in the centuries-long development of this search tool, including the trend towards putting words in alphabetical order; the shift from scrolls to codexes, whose page numbers were crucial to the creation of a usable index; and the rise of medieval universities, where scholars needed “new ways of efficiently finding parcels of text.” Characterizing the index as the precursor to Google search, Duncan dismisses fears that an overreliance on search engines will diminish humans’ cognitive abilities as “nothing more than a recent outbreak of an old fever.” Despite long-standing worries that indexes will reduce engagement with books and alter reading habits and attention spans for the worse (“the book index: killing off experimental curiosity since the seventeenth century”), Duncan makes a persuasive argument that it is natural for reading methods and text technology to evolve in order to make information easier to find. Readers of this enlightening and entertaining survey won’t take the humble index for granted again. (Feb.)
Prospect Magazine - Michael Delgado
"Masterful…[B]oth an entertaining and edifying journey through index-history and a spirited defense of the index (and indexers) in the technological age."
Christian Science Monitor - Barbara Spindel
"Entertaining and erudite…In an unexpectedly high-spirited book on indexes, the fun continues to the very last page."
James Waddell
"Duncan proves an amiable companion on what his subtitle aptly refers to as a ‘bookish adventure’…[U]seful as an introduction to book history in general as well as indexes in particular."
Mary Norris
"Dennis Duncan’s history—from Socrates to software—along with Paula Clarke Bain’s peerless index, is witty and personable throughout, and also serves as a sneak attack on the search engine. It’s safe to say that you will never take an index for granted again."
Atlantic - Alexandra Horowitz
"Lively….Duncan's enthusiasms are contagious."
BookRiot - Erica Ezeifedi
"A decidedly fun history…Dennis Duncan’s enthusiasm for the subject matter shines through the many witticisms and illustrations as he shows how something so seemingly small has been so vital to western literature."
The Economist
"As Dennis Duncan’s charming book shows, though today they suggest fusty libraries, indexes were once a novelty."
Kate Wiles
"A seemingly niche and esoteric subject, the index becomes, in Duncan’s hands, a minor miracle. Index, A History of the is not only about books…but about the nature of reading and about how we understand, categorize and engage with the world."
Lynne Truss
"Dennis Duncan has done a great service to all bibliophiles by writing this scholarly, witty, and affectionate history. By rights ‘Books, love of’ ought to have a page-long entry in the index."
4Columns - Brian Dillon
"A learned and playful study, by British academic Dennis Duncan, of a textual machinery so successful it’s become almost invisible."
Steven Moore
"An adventure, and 'bookish' in the most appealing sense…From ancient Egypt to Silicon Valley, Duncan is an ideal tour guide: witty, engaging, knowledgeable and a fount of diverting anecdotes."
Financial Times - Houman Barekat
"Dennis Duncan's fascinating study of the origins of the index offers subversion, whimsy—and hope."
Christopher de Hamel
"Entrancing.… Every page has things I didn’t know, or hardly realized I knew from a lifetime of looking things up. Master the use of the index and you have access to all knowledge.”"
David Bellos
"What a surprise to discover that the plain and humble index has such an intricate and rollicking history! Dennis Duncan gives us a learned grand tour from ancient times to the almost present in the design and uses—and cunning abuses—of what is still the most sophisticated search tool ever devised. Instruction, passim! Entertainment, idem!"
Margalit Fox
"Erudite, eminently readable and wittily titled…[U]shers the reader smoothly, even soothingly, along a fascinating, immensely pleasurable journey through previously uncharted terrain."
New York Review of Books - Fara Dabhoiwala
"Clever, sprightly…Duncan is a brilliantly illuminating and wide-ranging guide across…richly varied terrain."
Wall Street Journal - Ben Yagoda
"Gracefully learned, often witty and enlightening."
Frances Wilson
"Dennis Duncan gives us not only a history of the index, but an essay on human folly…[A] terrifically rewarding and also timely book."
Jennifer Szalai
"Smart, playful….Duncan has written such a generous book, attentive to the varieties of the reading experience."
The New Yorker
"Engaging…Duncan draws rich parallels to anxieties surrounding our own 'age of search' and makes an impassioned case for the continued relevance of the human-crafted index."
The Guardian - Peter Conrad
"[A] witty and wide-ranging study…[Duncan] is adventurous as well, often writing as if academic research were as revved-up as a Formula One race."
Library Journal
★ 01/01/2022
A book's index is often taken for granted by the modern reader. However, this tool for retrieving information is neither humble nor invisible and deserves such an in-depth consideration as Duncan (English, Univ. Coll. London; The Oulipo and Modern Thought) delivers here, with a balance of humor and intellectualism. The index has a rather recent history, Duncan writes, as it requires page numbers, which only came into use in the 15th century. Early indexes were, at times, novelties, until scholars realized that integrating page numbers with an alphabetical list would facilitate access to wisdom. As Duncan tells it, authors have sometimes delivered subtle jabs at their peers or subjects by slipping pejoratives and commentary into their indexes; in the digital age, Twitter's hashtags index one's thoughts in a similar manner. Duncan's research on indexes is exhaustive, and there's an unexpected level of hilarity here. He contends that the modern book—and thought itself—would be diminished if the index had never been invented. Perhaps most enjoyable are Duncan's 32-page index and the black-and-white photographs of historical book indexes. VERDICT Backmatter has never enjoyed such a spotlight; sure to amuse bibliophiles and casual readers alike.—Jessica Bushore
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-10-30
This book’s playful title announces both its subject and its tone.
Duncan, a professor of English, opens by observing that “the humble back-of-book index…is one of those inventions that are so successful…that they can often become invisible.” Then the author makes visible its development and refinement. This may sound like dry stuff, but the narrative both sparkles with geeky wit (the plural form indices is “for mathematicians and economists”) and shines with an infectious enthusiasm, as when the author celebrates the blurry impression of the very first page number. In the early chapters, Duncan discusses the development of the physical book, a survey that includes such delicious moments as the examination of a faithfully copied but useless medieval index to a book whose original had different pagination. He follows a mostly chronological, march-through–Western Civilization organization—any analogous systems used for organizing information in non-Western cultures go unmentioned. Within this structure, Duncan ranges back and forth in history. In the chapter on Renaissance-era scholars’ anxiety that an index would lead readers to skip the book proper, he touches on both Socrates’ skepticism of written language and modern-day hand-wringing at the effects of the internet on reading. A chapter on the emergence of the “weaponized index” treats readers to some epically funny battles in snark. The book’s illustrations are few but well chosen, presenting both the odd marginal symbol Duncan likens to “a snake holding a machine gun” inked by a 13th-century scholar, and the cheeky “Hi!” William F. Buckley wrote next to the index entry for Mailer, Norman in a gifted copy of his memoir. Duncan brings his chronicle into the digital present before closing with not one, but two indexes: a machine-generated one and a human-compiled one, by Paula Clarke Bain, member of the Society of Indexers, whose wit matches the author’s and underscores his passionate appreciation of the art.
Always erudite, frequently funny, and often surprising—a treat for lovers of the book qua book.
