The topic that the author explores is books and bookshelves. He asks the question: is the modern state of affairs, when books stand vertically on horizontal shelves, so obvious and inevitable? Readers will follow how a scroll from Antiquity turns into a codex, and that, in turn, into a book to which we are accustomed, and will learn how the problem of storing book collections was solved at different times. This is a lavishly illustrated and engagingly written book about the book - how it came into being and how we learned to preserve it.