How has the content of such familiar and, at first glance, unchanging concepts as “author”, “work”, “book”, “reading”, “library” changed over the centuries? And are we really experiencing the end of the “Age of Gutenberg”? These and other questions are answered in a book by one of the leading modern French historians, Roger Chartier, dedicated to the evolution of European written culture from the Middle Ages to the present day, when reading skills that had developed over centuries began to rapidly lose their relevance.