Publishers Weekly
★ 08/22/2022
“All books are magic. All books have agency and power in the real world,” writes Shakespeare scholar Smith (This Is Shakespeare) in this entertaining history. With a focus on “bookhood,” which includes “the impact of touch, smell, and hearing, on the experience of books,” Smith makes a colorful case that a book’s form contains as much “magic” as its content. In a chapter on how a book becomes a classic, she points to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The paperback of Carson’s environmental manifesto made it available to a wide audience—the 40th anniversary edition, published in a “handsome” hardcover Library of America volume, confirmed it as a classic designed to last. A section on the popularity of paperbacks details how they were sent to soldiers during wartime, and a chapter on book burnings points out that the act is “powerfully symbolic and practically almost entirely ineffectual,” plus reveals that through the destruction of unsold inventory, publishers themselves are the largest destroyers of books. With wit and verve, Smith concludes that a book becomes a book “in the hands of its readers... a book that is not handled and read is not really a book at all.” Readers should make space on their shelves for this dazzling and provocative study. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
An enthralling, timely, and spirited tour through the history of the book… Powerful… Portable Magic brims with insights, causing its reader to feel as though it might at any moment burst forth from its binding… A remarkable reminder of how books bear witness to their own histories — as well as, in various senses, those of their readers.”
—Daniel Blank, Los Angeles Review of Books
“A delightful examination of the symbol and meaning behind physical texts, for people who love books... [Smith] argues convincingly, a book is never just a book. And perhaps that's why despite a decade of premature obituaries, books are alive as ever."
—Randy Rosenthal, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Long after details of plot, character, and setting have vanished from memory, the sensual traces of a book’s paper, typeface, and binding linger... Emma Smith wants us to focus on the materiality of those packages of ink squiggles that inform, amuse, annoy, and inspire us... While she revels in the dazzling variety of physical objects we can call books, Smith also cautions against ‘a curious overinvestment in the book as a sacred object.’ Her own breezy book is meant not to be collected but to be read.”
—Steven G. Kellman, The American Scholar
"A lively and engaging survey... Covers an impressive amount of ground... Though Portable Magic reflects the work of a careful scholar, it will delight the thoughtful general reader. Any bibliophile will come away from it with a renewed appreciation for books and the central role they still play in our lives."
—BookPage
“Smith’s work is a delight for bibliophiles, historians, and curious readers craving an unconventional piece of nonfiction... The author’s trenchant analysis, attention to detail, and conversational tone combine to make a page-turning historical study... A fascinating material history of the book told through a geopolitical lens.”
—Kirkus
“Entertaining… With wit and verve, Smith concludes that a book becomes a book ‘in the hands of its readers... a book that is not handled and read is not really a book at all.’ Readers should make space on their shelves for this dazzling and provocative study.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred
"Amusing, informative and reverential, Portable Magic is an invitation to dwell on and celebrate the book in its physical form, resulting in nothing short of a reader's delight... Razor-sharp... All this is done with a conversational levity that is both beguiling and surprising: I did not expect to be laughing out loud at this book... Portable Magic is so well-written that you'll be itching to mark up multiple lines."
—BookBrowse
UK Praise
A Guardian and The Times Best Summer Read
"Alive in equal measure to the magic and the badness of books, Smith... charts the both the history of the book itself and the history of our relationship with it in all its equivocality... Anyone who picked up Smith’s excellent This Is Shakespeare will be familiar with the combination of deep scholarship and down-to-earth wit she brings to her subjects, and Portable Magic continues in the same charming vein. Applying the same methods to a much broader topic with similarly engaging effect, Smith proceeds here with enviable lightness of touch, mingling the serious and the silly as she goes... Rather brilliant."
—Tim Smith-Laing, The Telegraph (UK)
"Brilliantly written… Joyful… Smith reminds us of the thrills and spills of shabby covers, the illicit delight of writing in margins when you have been told not to and the guilty joy that comes from poring over traces left by someone else. It is these haptic, visceral and even slightly seedy pleasures of ‘bookhood’ that she brings so brilliantly to life.”
—Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian (UK)
“Wildly entertaining… Smith deals smartly with serious questions… This fascinating, slyly amusing book carries an undertow of personal affection for the curious, rectangular, multileaved objects with which we’re so familiar."
—John Walsh, The Sunday Times (UK)
"A fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book...I lost count of the times I exclaimed with delight when I read a nugget of information I hadn't encountered before."
—Val McDermid, The Times (UK)
Kirkus Reviews
2022-08-23
A critical look at trends in printing and book production as they relate to world history.
Smith, a professor of Shakespeare studies at Oxford and author of This Is Shakespeare, begins by examining various motivations for the mass distribution of books. These have ranged from the nefarious desires of European powers to further their imperialist, colonial agendas and disseminate propaganda to the radical desires of abolitionist societies to spread anti-slavery messages to women—and raise money for abolitionist causes—through the distribution of abolitionist texts disguised as the predecessors of Christmas-themed women’s literature. The development of the paperback, writes Smith, was directly related to the free distribution of Armed Services Editions to Americans serving abroad in the years during and after World War II. These cheaply stapled but durable books popularized such titles as The Great Gatsby, which, though now iconic, was not widely read before its inclusion in the Armed Services collection. This initiative led to printing methods that assured the affordability of texts like Silent Spring, and that book’s widespread distribution helped spur the modern environmental movement. Smith also overturns common myths about literary history, most notably the idea that Gutenberg created the first printing press. “Chinese and Korean pioneers of print predated Gutenberg by centuries,” writes the author, “and the relatively low cost of bamboo-fiber paper in East Asia meant that early print was a less elite technology in these regions. Chinese print technology developed movable type.” The author’s trenchant analysis, attention to detail, and conversational tone combine to make a page-turning historical study. At times, though, the rapid narrative pace becomes frustrating, as the author skips rapidly through trends—e.g., abolitionist book sales—that warrant more space. Nonetheless, Smith’s work is a delight for bibliophiles, historians, and curious readers craving an unconventional piece of nonfiction.
A fascinating material history of the book told through a geopolitical lens.