By the bestselling author of Just My Type: a "thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating" journey into the concept of time "stuffed with fascinating material" ( Observer, UK).Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalize it and make it meaningful. In this fascinating, anecdotal exploration, award-winning author Simon Garfield has two simp...

A journey into the history of writing, thought, and culture through the story of the pen and its integral role in shaping our lives into the twenty-first century—from New York Times bestselling author Simon GarfieldThe pen has been with us for millennia. Many beloved authors had their preferred instruments—Jane Austen and Dickens wrote their novels with hundreds of quills, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Graham Greene favored a Parker Duofold, Ernest Hemingway ...

"A fascinating, informative and highly entertaining expedition through the highways and byways of dogdom." —John Bradshaw, New York Times bestselling author of Dog SenseA charming meditation on the relationship between humans and dogs, drawing upon history, science, art, and personal experience to illuminate a magical bond that has endured millennia—from the New York Times bestselling author of

From the “deliriously clever” (Boston Globe) Simon Garfield, New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type, comesthe wild and fascinating story of the encyclopedia, from Ancient Greece to the present day.New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"A brilliant book about knowledge itself.” —Deirdre Mask, author of The Address Book**“Garfield’s witty history captures the...

The New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type and On the Map offers an ode to letter writing and its possible salvation in the digital age.Few things are as exciting—and potentially life-changing—as discovering an old letter. And while etiquette books still extol the practice, letter writing seems to be disappearing amid a flurry of e-mails, texting, and tweeting. The recent decline in letter writing marks a cultural shift so vast...

'Glorious' EMMA THOMPSON'Delightful' PHILIP PULLMAN'Brilliant' JACQUELINE WILSONFrom a reed cut on the banks of the Nile to the Sharpie, the pen has been with us for millennia. And all of humanity – from our faintest notions to our wildest inventions, our gossip and legends, our grandest proclamations and most intimate confessions – has flowed from a quill, ink chamber or ballpoint tip. The pen is the enduring link be...

In Miniature is a delightful, entertaining and illuminating investigation into our peculiar fascination with making things small, and what small things tell us about the world at large.Here you will find the secret histories of tiny Eiffel Towers, the truth about the flea circus, a doll’s house made for a queen, eerie tableaux of crime scenes, miniature food, model villages and railways, and more. Simon Garfield brings together history, psychology, art and obsession, to ex...

A hugely entertaining and revealing guide to the history of type that asks, What does your favorite font say about you?Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product we buy. But where do fonts come from, and why do we need so many? Who is responsible for the staid practicality of Times New Roman, the cool anonymity of Arial, or the irritating levity of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)?

An obsessively readable memoir about the passions—and perils—of collecting, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Just My Type.From the Penny Red to the Blue Mauritius, generations of collectors have been drawn to the mystique of rare stamps. Once a widespread pastime of schoolboys, philately has increasingly become the province of older men obsessed with the shrewd investment, the once-in-a-lifetime find, the one elusive beauty that will ...

Cartography enthusiasts rejoice: the bestselling author of Just My Type reveals the fascinating relationship between man and map.Simon Garfield’s Just My Type illuminated the world of fonts and made everyone take a stand on Comic Sans and care about kerning. Now Garfield takes on a subject even dearer to our fanatical human hearts: maps.Imagine a world without maps. How would we travel? Could we own land? What would men and women argue abo...

A glorious gut-wrenching read . . . A Notable Woman makes my heart sing. Jean's diaries are a life in its entirety, in all its glorious mess" ( The Pool ).In April 1925, at the age of fifteen, Jean Lucey Pratt started a journal that she kept until just a few days before her death in 1986, producing over a million words in forty-five exercise books. What emerges is a portrait of a truly unique, sp...

A compact and charming history of the beloved handcrafted font by the New York Times best-selling author of Just My Type.Albertus, first carved on a bronze tablet in the 1930s by German Jewish refugee Berthold Wolpe, has proved to be one of the most enduring handcrafted typefaces in the world. It is at once modern and timeless, authoritative and whimsical—renowned as the typeface of London Street signs, David Bowie albums, and Star Wars m...