EDITING WITH THE HISTORY IN THE BACKGROUND. (ANN BLAIR’S TOO MUCH TO KNOW... AND ANTHONY GRAFTON’S THE CULTURE OF CORRECTION...)
The first review deals with Ann Blair’s very interesting book on managing scholarly information up to the early modern era. A concise summary of Blair’s most important ideas is accompanied by a brief commentary underscoring the book’s merits and shortly referring to some of its more debatable details.
The second review contains a brief summary of Anthony Grafton’s fascinating new book covering the work of book correctors and editors in the first two and a half centuries of print. The work done by one of the best scholars in the field of intellectual history is based mainly on case studies and leads to a conclusion that five hundred years ago publishing posed almost exactly the same problems as it does today.

The first review deals with Ann Blair’s very interesting book on managing scholarly information up to the early modern era. A concise summary of Blair’s most important ideas is accompanied by a brief commentary underscoring the book’s merits and shortly referring to some of its more debatable details.
The second review contains a brief summary of Anthony Grafton’s fascinating new book covering the work of book correctors and editors in the first two and a half centuries of print. The work done by one of the best scholars in the field of intellectual history is based mainly on case studies and leads to a conclusion that five hundred years ago publishing posed almost exactly the same problems as it does today.