If it hadn't been a present from my dad, I'd give you my copy. It's too thoroughly riddled with errors for me to take it seriously. At least on my first half dozen tries I found I could open to any spread and find a half-truth or misleadingly incomplete statement. I actively recommend *not* reading or using this book.

- he talks about features specific to specific foundries' cuts of Baskerville, Bodoni and Caslon as if they were features of the broader typeface. To read this book you'd think there was only one digital version of Caslon! (I know Adobe Caslon is the most common digital Caslon, but even Adobe sells a bunch of other Caslons.)

- there's dubious advice on bold and italic as formatting that clearly indicates that he's never used a Windows computer or dealt with cross-platform issues.

- his comments on legibility cite Sir Cyril Burt. This is the guy whose studies on identical twins were found to use made up data. I'm thinking I wouldn't cite Sir Cyril's work as evidence of anything.

- despite being published in 2004, and having lots of info specific to nearly-modern digital type, the writing is stuck in the 1990s. There's info on expert sets and supplemental fonts and inputting ligatures manually... and no mention of OpenType.

- the page describing the prime and double-prime shows instead an opening quote and opening double-quote.

That's not an exhaustive list. I just opened to a spread and looked until I found an error or omission, and then opened to another spread. I always found one.

That's not to say there isn't tons of good content in here as well. Clearly, he knows a lot about typography. It's just that I require a lower error rate and something that is more up to date to recommend it.

I see Amazon US has used copies for as low as $27 for the hardcover (oddly, the paperback is more expensive at $38.99). For some reason Amazon.ca's prices are rather more stratospheric.

By the way, the entire book is set in a neo-grotesque sans (Univers, perhaps?). Ugh. But I must say, if one is going to set a 159-page book in a neo-grotesque, the way he does it is the way to go: narrow ragged-right columns and adequate line spacing. However, in the body text the type size feels a bit tiny and anemic for the weight of the typeface, and the captions the bold weight causes the tiny neo-grot type to pretty much close up, noticeably harming legibility.

> That’s not to say there isn’t tons of good content in here as well.
> ....
> It’s just that I require a lower error rate

Well, it's not just you, it's everybody. It's not enough to have good content, a good book has to have very little bad content. The reason is that the only way to separate the two is if you already know the material! :-/ The people who actually need a book need to be able to trust it first.

BTW, I have an unused copy of Jury's "Letterpress: New applications for traditional skills" (2006) if anybody is interested. Being mostly visual (and nicely composed actually) it can't be TOO error-prone...

hhp

Wait, who's habit is it, exactly? ;-)

hhp