Breaking the Book

Breaking the Book compares and contrasts the print with the digital revolution, emphasizing that those with one foot in manuscript and coterie print cultures have much to reveal to those of us who straddle mass print and new media.
Along with altering our notions of what constitutes a "book," the transformation of the printed page to digital text has forced us to question long-held methodologies in literary criticism. In this new manifesto, noted media and digital humanities scholar Laura Mandell explores the cognitive consequences and emotional effects of human interactions with physical books, revealing why the traditional humanities disciplines are resistant to "digital" humanities. Provocative and timely, Breaking the Book opens an important new chapter on the liberating potential for digital media to revolutionize the fields of book history and the digital humanities.
Breaking the Book is a manifesto on the cognitive consequences and emotional effects of human interactions with physical books that reveals why the traditional humanities disciplines are resistant to 'digital' humanities.
1. Explores the reasons why the traditional humanities disciplines are resistant to 'digital humanities'
2. Reveals facets of book history, offering it as an example of how different media shape our modes of thinking and feeling
3. Gathers together the most important book history and literary criticism concerning the hundred years leading up to the early 19th-century emergence of mass print culture
4. Predicts effects of the digital revolution on disciplinarity, expertise, and the institutional restructuring of the humanities