A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

by Judith Flanders

Overview

From a New York Times-bestselling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling characters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification -- Yale listed its students by their family's social status until 1886. And yet, while the order of the alphabet now rules -- libraries, phone books, reference books, even the order of entry for the teams at the Olympic Games -- it has remained curiously invisible. With abundant inquisitiveness and wry humor, historian Judith Flanders traces the triumph of alphabetical order and offers a compendium of Western knowledge, from A to Z.

A Times (UK) Best Book of 2020

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541675063
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Judith Flanders is a social historian. Her works include the bestselling The Invention of Murder, Inside the Victorian Home, and The Victorian City. She is senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham, as well as a frequent contributor to the Sunday Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Acknowledgments xv

Preface xvii

Chapter 1 A Is for Antiquity

From the Beginning to the Classical World 1

Chapter 2 B Is for the Benedictines

The Monasteries and the Early Middle Ages 27

Chapter 3 C Is for Categories

Authorities and Organization, to the Twelfth Century 43

Chapter 4 D Is for Distinctions

The High Middle Ages and the Search Too! 71

Chapter 5 E Is for Expansion

The Reference Work in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries 91

Chapter 6 F Is for Firsts

From the Birth of Printing to Library Catalogs in the Fifteenth to Sixteenth Centuries 105

Chapter 7 G Is for Government

Bureaucracy and the Office, from the Sixteenth Century to the French Revolution 131

Chapter 8 H Is for History

Libraries, Research, and Extracting in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 167

Chapter 9 I Is for Index Cards

From Copy Clerks to Office Supplies in the Nineteenth Century 197

Chapter 10 Y Is for Y2K

From the Phone Book to Hypertext in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries 221

Timeline 237

Bibliography 243

Notes 265

Index 301

Photo section appears after page 166

Editorial Reviews

"Fascinating... A Place for Everything rewards us with a fresh take on our quest to stockpile knowledge. It feels particularly relevant now that search engines are rendering old ways of organizing information obsolete...That we have acquired so much knowledge is astounding; that we have devised ways to find what we need to know quickly is what merits this original and impressive book."—New York Times

"Fascinating . . . truly revelatory"—Wall Street Journal

"One of the many fascinations of Judith Flanders's book is that it reveals what a weird, unlikely creation the alphabet is...an intriguing history not just of alphabetical order but of the human need for both pattern and intellectual efficiency."—Guardian

"A charming repository of idiosyncrasy, a love letter to literacy that rightly delights in alphabetisation's exceptions as much as its rules."—Financial Times

“This is an utterly charming book, packed with engrossing details.”—The Times (UK)

"For readers who love language or armchair historians interested in the evolution of linguistics, this is catnip. For the mildly curious, it's accessible, narratively adventurous, and surprisingly insightful about how the alphabet marks us all in some way...A rich cultural and linguistic history."—Kirkus

"A Place for Everything presents itself as a history of alphabetical order, but in fact it is much more than that. Rather, as the title suggests, it offers something like a general history of the various ways humans have sorted and filed the world around them."—The Spectator

"A library and academic essential rather than a catchpenny popular read (that, by the way, is a compliment)."—The Times of London

"Quirky and compelling... [Flanders] is a meticulous historian with a taste for the offbeat; the story of alphabetical order suits her well."—Dan Jones, Sunday Times (UK)

"Surprising and copiously researched."—Times Literary Supplement

"Flanders is one of our outstanding popular historians.... [A Place for Everything] is an exemplar of the form on which it focuses."—The Critic

"Judith Flanders has a knack for making odd subjects accessible."—i

“Flanders is especially good in discussing when and why alphabetical order was not used, or was resisted, even after it was available....The prose is engaging [and] the examples are to the point[.]”
 —Jack Lynch, Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America

From the Publisher

Julia Winwood's narrative tone is that of a well-done lecture, with emphasis on interesting ideas and intriguing facts. She can bring a hint of suspense to the invention of the ring binder and make listeners smile as they hear a poem on alphabetical order. Judith Flanders's history of ordering systems and the developments that made them necessary is thoughtful but a bit esoteric. Her account of the roots of the written word and libraries focuses on such things as indexes, concordances, and card catalogues. Early on, the origins of the word "abracadabra" in the Roman alphabet can seem magical as delivered in Winwood's voice. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Julia Winwood's narrative tone is that of a well-done lecture, with emphasis on interesting ideas and intriguing facts. She can bring a hint of suspense to the invention of the ring binder and make listeners smile as they hear a poem on alphabetical order. Judith Flanders's history of ordering systems and the developments that made them necessary is thoughtful but a bit esoteric. Her account of the roots of the written word and libraries focuses on such things as indexes, concordances, and card catalogues. Early on, the origins of the word "abracadabra" in the Roman alphabet can seem magical as delivered in Winwood's voice. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

2020-08-19
The centurieslong history of the evolution of the alphabet as we know it.

In her latest, social historian and novelist Flanders tackles the curious history of alphabetical order. The author creates a fitting structure for the book, proceeding from “A Is for Antiquity” to “Y Is for Y2K” (not every letter gets its own chapter). Flanders moves from a discussion of language in the classical world all the way to the 21st century, with hypertext and other breakthroughs in language acquisition and absorption. It might seem like a relatively dull subject, but the author’s prose is consistently engaging. “Writing is powerful because it transcends time,” she writes, “and because it creates an artificial memory, or store of knowledge, a memory that can be located physically, be it on clay tablets, on walls, on stone, on bronze, papyrus, parchment or paper.” Flanders introduces the Benedictine monks and their influential work in their monasteries, and after spending several chapters on the Middle Ages, she introduces the birth of printing as well as movable type and the first card catalogs. Flanders admits that while many history buffs think that alphabetization “followed hard on the heels of printing…the reality was less tidy, as reality usually is.” Fascinating character sketches further the story, among them vibrant portraits of Samuel Pepys, John Locke, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but we should all hail librarians (“the institutional memory of their libraries”) as the unsung heroes of this history. Flanders often points out that many of the advances in the organizing principles of the alphabet have been the result of constant experimentation rather than lightning-strike breakthroughs. For readers who love language or armchair historians interested in the evolution of linguistics, this is catnip. For the mildly curious, it’s accessible, narratively adventurous, and surprisingly insightful about how the alphabet marks us all in some way.

A rich cultural and linguistic history.

Kirkus Reviews