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A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

by Judith Flanders
$8.90
Compare to estimated retail price: S$19.12  

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A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order
A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

Alphabetization's journey: invisible yet ubiquitous victory.

If you're intrigued by the unnoticed frameworks shaping our world, "A Place for Everything" might just satiate that curiosity. Judith Flanders takes us on a historical adventure, revealing how something as commonplace as alphabetical order can have a rich and surprisingly contentious past. It's a tale woven with quirky anecdotes and tenacious characters that could change the way you look at every index, dictionary, and phone book.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

by Judith Flanders
$8.90
Compare to estimated retail price: S$19.12  

The item you've got your eye on is secondhand. You probably already know that, but just in case!

The estimated retail price shown next to any listed item represents the first-hand prices we've seen elsewhere, or the estimated original retail price of a comparable item of the same quality, construction and material offered elsewhere in new condition.

Condition guide

Book Condition Guide

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*Books may be missing bundle media (e.g. CD, e-book code), if included.

 

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ISBN: 9781509881581
Authors: Judith Flanders
Publisher: Picador
Date of Publication: 2021-02-04
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: History
Related Topics: Microhistory, Historical
Goodreads rating: 3.47
(rated by 979 readers)

Description

In A Place for Everything, historian Judith Flanders draws our attention to both the neglected ubiquity of the alphabet and the long, complex history of its rise to prominence. For, while the order of the alphabet itself became fixed very soon after letters were first invented, their ability to sort and store and organize proved far less obvious. To many of our forebears, the idea of organizing things by the random chance of the alphabet rather than by established systems of hierarchy or typology lay somewhere between unthinkable and disrespectful. The author fascinatingly lays out the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its possible earliest days as a sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria in the third century BCE, to its current decline in prominence in our digital age of Wikipedia and Google.
 

Alphabetization's journey: invisible yet ubiquitous victory.

If you're intrigued by the unnoticed frameworks shaping our world, "A Place for Everything" might just satiate that curiosity. Judith Flanders takes us on a historical adventure, revealing how something as commonplace as alphabetical order can have a rich and surprisingly contentious past. It's a tale woven with quirky anecdotes and tenacious characters that could change the way you look at every index, dictionary, and phone book.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.