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You Could Look It Up: The Reference Shelf from Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia
"Knowledge is of two kinds," said Samuel Johnson in 1775. "We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." Today we think of Wikipedia as the source of all information, the ultimate reference. Yet it is just the latest in a long line of aggregated knowledge--reference works that have shaped the way we've seen the world for centuries.
You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the way they have influenced each other. From The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known compendium of laws in ancient Babylon almost two millennia before Christ to Pliny's Natural History; from the 11th-century Domesday Book recording land holdings in England to Abraham Ortelius's first atlas of the world; from Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language to The Whole Earth Catalog to Google, Jack Lynch illuminates the human stories and accomplishment behind each, as well as its enduring impact on civilization. In the process, he offers new insight into the value of knowledge.
You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the way they have influenced each other. From The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known compendium of laws in ancient Babylon almost two millennia before Christ to Pliny's Natural History; from the 11th-century Domesday Book recording land holdings in England to Abraham Ortelius's first atlas of the world; from Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language to The Whole Earth Catalog to Google, Jack Lynch illuminates the human stories and accomplishment behind each, as well as its enduring impact on civilization. In the process, he offers new insight into the value of knowledge.
444 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
November 4, 2016
Probably a book only a librarian would select to read of their own free will… I love reference books and could power rank my favorites right here right now. But the book was disappointingly shallow, and mostly about dictionaries, and dictionaries have already had their own (better) pop history treatments (OED alone has two recent pop histories! two!!) so there’s not much point to dedicating 50% of the book to them. Those who wish to read about dictionaries, presumably, are already sufficiently educated, thank you. There’s definitely some good overview histories of academic reference favorites, like I didn’t know the history of Grove Music, which is my most consulted academic reference, nor did I know all the drama surrounding Grey’s Anatomy. You always suspected these books were written by crazy people, and lo, they were. But the author is an English professor and it really shows, as he’s not a reference librarian he’s clearly never seen the truly weird reference books, nor been taught how to do reference out of textbooks on reference, nor seen the reference materials normal people actually use.
The author did a particularly irritating thing in the intro where he mentions that whether or not cookbooks are reference books is a debated thing, then never mentions it again. Well come on, give your own opinion! You going to act like Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management isn’t worthy of inclusion in this history, a book that earned the reputation of being one of the only two books a new English wife needs, the other being the Bible? As a home-econ-history buff, enraging. Either he has a very indulgent spouse or subsists on takeout, no person who cooks would fail to give the correct opinion on that question, 3 particular cookbooks (and a self-written binder of Secret Recipes involving mostly lentils and my bread machine but not in combination) are my most-used household reference books. And even if we indulge that he is the sort of old-school American man who has never even poured his own milk on his Cheerios, he has apparently never used anything classified under the LC subject heading “Automobiles -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.” a vital and heavily used part of any public library’s reference collection, with several competing publishing brands, and which takes up over 100 non-circulating shelf spots at my city’s public library.
The best populist reference he included is the history of the 18th century Hoyle books on the rules of basic card games, and originator of the phrase “according to Hoyle.” (For a more modern Hoyle, I think no public library’s reference collection is complete without the Pokemon Essential Handbook, now in its second edition.) The only popular female-oriented reference he covers is the development of Emily Post’s Etiquette, which is a masterpiece of historical documentation, and disgustingly undercited in American history. Having the Good Blue Book included was very appreciated. In general though, the book misses the reference you take for granted, like the phonebook.
I rather hope a working reference professional writes a new one in a few years, because there's lots of interesting history behind our reference books (which the author very pithily calls "society's notes to itself") but this book just lacks that love and intimacy with reference that a librarian would bring to it.
The author did a particularly irritating thing in the intro where he mentions that whether or not cookbooks are reference books is a debated thing, then never mentions it again. Well come on, give your own opinion! You going to act like Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management isn’t worthy of inclusion in this history, a book that earned the reputation of being one of the only two books a new English wife needs, the other being the Bible? As a home-econ-history buff, enraging. Either he has a very indulgent spouse or subsists on takeout, no person who cooks would fail to give the correct opinion on that question, 3 particular cookbooks (and a self-written binder of Secret Recipes involving mostly lentils and my bread machine but not in combination) are my most-used household reference books. And even if we indulge that he is the sort of old-school American man who has never even poured his own milk on his Cheerios, he has apparently never used anything classified under the LC subject heading “Automobiles -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.” a vital and heavily used part of any public library’s reference collection, with several competing publishing brands, and which takes up over 100 non-circulating shelf spots at my city’s public library.
The best populist reference he included is the history of the 18th century Hoyle books on the rules of basic card games, and originator of the phrase “according to Hoyle.” (For a more modern Hoyle, I think no public library’s reference collection is complete without the Pokemon Essential Handbook, now in its second edition.) The only popular female-oriented reference he covers is the development of Emily Post’s Etiquette, which is a masterpiece of historical documentation, and disgustingly undercited in American history. Having the Good Blue Book included was very appreciated. In general though, the book misses the reference you take for granted, like the phonebook.
I rather hope a working reference professional writes a new one in a few years, because there's lots of interesting history behind our reference books (which the author very pithily calls "society's notes to itself") but this book just lacks that love and intimacy with reference that a librarian would bring to it.
August 30, 2017
This was fairly interesting, especially as someone who read dictionaries and encyclopedias as a child and still reads on Wikipedia pretty extensively.
April 12, 2016
A fun, anecdotal look at reference books through the ages. One of my favorite sections is the one on delays with its tales of errant authors. For all its anecdotal nature, Lynch sure covers a lot. Everything from cartography to sex manuals.
April 23, 2016
For someone like me who hardly ever reads even nonfiction to enjoy a book about reference books this much is worrisome. If you see that I am reading the reference books themselves, you should definitely look into it.
February 13, 2022
3. This book is an account of 50 great reference books, from the third millennium BC to the present , all of them ambitious attempts to collect a vast amount of knowledge and to present it to the world in a usable form.
Howard Hawks's 1941 screwball comedy 'Ball of fire' features a team of socially inept professors, modelled on snow white and the seven dwarfs, who live together in a big house and work on an encyclopedia containing all the worlds knowledge. Gary Cooper playing a Professor stands at the head of this story crew of encyclopaedists, lexicographers, and grammarians.
4. In the first Encyclopaedia Britannica human beings were divided into five groups – American, European, Asiatic, African, and monstrous.
5. The dictionary, the in Cyclopedia, the Atlas, the legal code – all acts to distil knowledge. Distillation is the right metaphor… As any encyclopedia will explain, distillation removes impurities and gives us a concentrated essence.… The reference book is concentrated wisdom.
7. I have borrowed my method from the ancient biography of Plutarch: each of the 25 chapters focuses on an exemplary pair of major reference works. Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' put important Greeks next to important Romans e.g. Alexander the great and Julius Caesar, Theseus and Romulus, Demosthenes and Mark Anthony, and then explored the similarities and differences between them to highlight what was distinct about each figure. In my pairings I choose two or more or less contemporary works on related subjects and set them in their historical context. I have had to omit whole genres: almanacs, timelines, biographical dictionaries, price guides, calendars, bibliographies, dictionaries of slang and regionalisms, compendia of proverbs, and thesauruses.
8. This Book is both a history of and a love letter to the great dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and atlases. It is also, I fear, something of a eulogy: we may be approaching the end of the era of the reference book.
22. According to one estimate about 5 million copies of books had been made in Europe between 450 and 1450. But in the half century after Gutenberg developed printing with movable type, around 1450, somewhere between eight and 20 million copies of the new printed books were circulating – more in 50 years than in the previous thousand.
The idiom 'information fatigue' is first attested in 1991 in the OED defined as 'apathy, indifference or mental exhaustion arising from exposure to too much information.' The time is new, but the idea is ancient. Ecclesiastes says that "in much wisdom is much grief: and he does increase his knowledge increases sorrow" Ecclesiastes, 1 verse 18.
118. We are left with the strange paradox that mathematical tables were rendered entirely obsolete by the computer, although tables were the main reason computers were invented. The computer itself – the transformative technology of the last six years – is an unintentional byproduct of the reference book.
184. Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia estimates that contributors are 80% male, more than 65% single, more than 85% without children, around 70% are under the age of 30".
192. More than one critic has summarised the influence of the Encyclopedie on the French thought. It promoted scepticism about traditional claims, willingness to question the authority of both the church and the state, discontent with the status quo, and determination to make the world better through the application of reason. And soon these very qualities would shake the foundations of the French nation. It is hard to overstate the significance of the Encyclopédie in turning society upside down in 1789.
258. Louis de Jaucourt worked for almost 20 years on a six volume folio medical dictionary. In 1750 he negotiated with a Dutch publisher to bring the book out. He had the manuscript carefully packed in a box and sent on the ship from Rouen to Amsterdam – but the ship sank to the bottom of the sea somewhere off the Dutch coast, taking the only copy of his work with it. Recognising that it was too late to start again from scratch, he turned to the editors of L'Encyclopedie, and offered his services there.
284. "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartletts Familiar Quotations it's not variable work, and they studied it intently. The quotations, when in graved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more." Winston Churchill.
292. All this Huxley was a Britannica Rita, he took a complete 12th edition with him on holiday. Bertrand Russell recalled, "it was the only book that ever influenced Huxley. You Could always tell by his conversation which volume he'd be reading. One day it would be Alps, Andes and Apennines, and the next it would be the Himalayas and the Hippocratic oath". Even young Bill Gates read the 1960 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia nearly all the way through, and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales fondly remembers reading his parents copy of World Book.
AJ Jacobs read the complete Britannica in a single year and he reported on the experience in his book the know it all one man is humble quest to become the smartest person in the world 2004. 33,000 pages, 65,000 articles 9.5 thousand contributors, 32 volumes each weighing in at four pounds, a total of 44 million words. To put this in perspective, war and peace is only 560,000 words Shakespeare's collected Works 900,000 words, and you could read the Bible 53 times in a row in the time it would take you to read Britannica.
Writer Ammon Shea performed a similar experiment Reading the OED.
385. Reference books show up in fiction. Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet (1881) tried to read everything I've written on every branch of human knowledge and to summarise the results. Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1942) features an Encyclopedia Galactica.
Today we tend to have our encyclopaedic dreams on the Internet. Googles corporate mission is "to organise the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful".
389. More information is more readily available to more people than at any time in human history. A rural 12-year-old with a $250 laptop and a slow Internet connection now has access to more information than the wealthiest scholars and librarians at the richest universities just a generation ago, and anyone with a smart phone owns orders of magnitude more information than fit in the library of Alexandria.
Howard Hawks's 1941 screwball comedy 'Ball of fire' features a team of socially inept professors, modelled on snow white and the seven dwarfs, who live together in a big house and work on an encyclopedia containing all the worlds knowledge. Gary Cooper playing a Professor stands at the head of this story crew of encyclopaedists, lexicographers, and grammarians.
4. In the first Encyclopaedia Britannica human beings were divided into five groups – American, European, Asiatic, African, and monstrous.
5. The dictionary, the in Cyclopedia, the Atlas, the legal code – all acts to distil knowledge. Distillation is the right metaphor… As any encyclopedia will explain, distillation removes impurities and gives us a concentrated essence.… The reference book is concentrated wisdom.
7. I have borrowed my method from the ancient biography of Plutarch: each of the 25 chapters focuses on an exemplary pair of major reference works. Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' put important Greeks next to important Romans e.g. Alexander the great and Julius Caesar, Theseus and Romulus, Demosthenes and Mark Anthony, and then explored the similarities and differences between them to highlight what was distinct about each figure. In my pairings I choose two or more or less contemporary works on related subjects and set them in their historical context. I have had to omit whole genres: almanacs, timelines, biographical dictionaries, price guides, calendars, bibliographies, dictionaries of slang and regionalisms, compendia of proverbs, and thesauruses.
8. This Book is both a history of and a love letter to the great dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and atlases. It is also, I fear, something of a eulogy: we may be approaching the end of the era of the reference book.
22. According to one estimate about 5 million copies of books had been made in Europe between 450 and 1450. But in the half century after Gutenberg developed printing with movable type, around 1450, somewhere between eight and 20 million copies of the new printed books were circulating – more in 50 years than in the previous thousand.
The idiom 'information fatigue' is first attested in 1991 in the OED defined as 'apathy, indifference or mental exhaustion arising from exposure to too much information.' The time is new, but the idea is ancient. Ecclesiastes says that "in much wisdom is much grief: and he does increase his knowledge increases sorrow" Ecclesiastes, 1 verse 18.
118. We are left with the strange paradox that mathematical tables were rendered entirely obsolete by the computer, although tables were the main reason computers were invented. The computer itself – the transformative technology of the last six years – is an unintentional byproduct of the reference book.
184. Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia estimates that contributors are 80% male, more than 65% single, more than 85% without children, around 70% are under the age of 30".
192. More than one critic has summarised the influence of the Encyclopedie on the French thought. It promoted scepticism about traditional claims, willingness to question the authority of both the church and the state, discontent with the status quo, and determination to make the world better through the application of reason. And soon these very qualities would shake the foundations of the French nation. It is hard to overstate the significance of the Encyclopédie in turning society upside down in 1789.
258. Louis de Jaucourt worked for almost 20 years on a six volume folio medical dictionary. In 1750 he negotiated with a Dutch publisher to bring the book out. He had the manuscript carefully packed in a box and sent on the ship from Rouen to Amsterdam – but the ship sank to the bottom of the sea somewhere off the Dutch coast, taking the only copy of his work with it. Recognising that it was too late to start again from scratch, he turned to the editors of L'Encyclopedie, and offered his services there.
284. "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartletts Familiar Quotations it's not variable work, and they studied it intently. The quotations, when in graved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more." Winston Churchill.
292. All this Huxley was a Britannica Rita, he took a complete 12th edition with him on holiday. Bertrand Russell recalled, "it was the only book that ever influenced Huxley. You Could always tell by his conversation which volume he'd be reading. One day it would be Alps, Andes and Apennines, and the next it would be the Himalayas and the Hippocratic oath". Even young Bill Gates read the 1960 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia nearly all the way through, and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales fondly remembers reading his parents copy of World Book.
AJ Jacobs read the complete Britannica in a single year and he reported on the experience in his book the know it all one man is humble quest to become the smartest person in the world 2004. 33,000 pages, 65,000 articles 9.5 thousand contributors, 32 volumes each weighing in at four pounds, a total of 44 million words. To put this in perspective, war and peace is only 560,000 words Shakespeare's collected Works 900,000 words, and you could read the Bible 53 times in a row in the time it would take you to read Britannica.
Writer Ammon Shea performed a similar experiment Reading the OED.
385. Reference books show up in fiction. Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet (1881) tried to read everything I've written on every branch of human knowledge and to summarise the results. Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1942) features an Encyclopedia Galactica.
Today we tend to have our encyclopaedic dreams on the Internet. Googles corporate mission is "to organise the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful".
389. More information is more readily available to more people than at any time in human history. A rural 12-year-old with a $250 laptop and a slow Internet connection now has access to more information than the wealthiest scholars and librarians at the richest universities just a generation ago, and anyone with a smart phone owns orders of magnitude more information than fit in the library of Alexandria.
May 21, 2016
I admit it. I'm a nerd. Who else but a nerd would read a book about the history of reference books and finish it, saying, "Gee, that was fun." Okay, it wasn't all fun. It occasionally dragged a bit, and could be shortened a bit by eliminating a few of the different types of dictionaries profiled. But it was often fascinating. The author did a good job of keeping it from lagging too much by keeping the chapters short. Each chapter focused on two similar books from roughly the same era - different approaches to similar material. Then there are "half chapters" that cover bits of reference-related info that anyone who loves trivia will appreciate. From dictionaries to encyclopedias, medical manuals to chemical tables, atlases to, well just about anything, you'll find its history here. Even such trivial reference books as the Guinness Book of Records are covered, and believe me, it's origin story is absolutely appropriate.
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September 9, 2016Jack Lynch, a polymathic professor of English who specializes in 18th-century literature and the history of the English language at Rutgers, is author of such earlier works as The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, from Shakespeare to South Park and Samuel Johnson’s Insults: A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights, and Effronteries from the Eighteenth-Century Master.
You Could Look It Up—another large, exuberant volume from a man who loves books (that includes scrolls, tablets, pillars, parchment, manuscripts, the codex), language, libraries, history—is intended as “both a history and a love letter to the great dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases.” But it may also, he fears, be “something of a eulogy: we may be approaching the end of the era of the reference book.”
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
You Could Look It Up—another large, exuberant volume from a man who loves books (that includes scrolls, tablets, pillars, parchment, manuscripts, the codex), language, libraries, history—is intended as “both a history and a love letter to the great dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases.” But it may also, he fears, be “something of a eulogy: we may be approaching the end of the era of the reference book.”
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
November 29, 2019
Having thoroughly enjoyed Lynch’s “The Lexicographer's Dilemma” I was curious to see his take on reference books. After finish it I have to admit that it wasn’t exactly stimulating. Lynch’s hefty volume seems to be a collection of stories about the large number of people who devoted their lives to creating gargantuan reference books. The lack of a cohesive thread running through the stories made the book feel like a reference book on its own, one you would pick up to learn a bit about the compilers of this or that encyclopedia or dictionary. While there were certainly interesting tidbits here and there I can’t honestly bring myself to recommend this to anyone not thrilled by the description I have made.
September 27, 2016
Interesting survey of reference “books” (including scrolls, tablets, codexes, Wikipedia) throughout history, starting with the Code of Hammurabi in Ancient Babylon. You probably have to be a bit of a reference book geek -- which I am -- to like this one. Even then, I found a few of the entries not terribly interesting. But overall Lynch keeps it pretty entertaining – the chapters are short and he pairs up works in discussing them, so even when you get to a topic of less interest to you, it’s over pretty quickly.
March 9, 2016
OK, it is specialized topic, but done with wit and style and Oh So Readable. One of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time. Expand your life past Google and Wikipedia.
March 16, 2019
Occasionally, if we are lucky during our bibliographical exploratory journey the universe may drop into our laps an extraordinary gem. Books which blow us a little closer to the stars. I am currently reading Jack Lynch’s You Could Look it Up (2016) published by Bloomsbury Press, which explores ‘The reference shelf from ancient Babylon to Wikipedia’. It sounds rather like a infinite uninhabited desert, full of dusty relics but it’s not. The structure of Lynch’s book is attention grabbing and bursting with humanity from the get go. He groups together two carefully selected reference ‘books’ in each of the twenty-four chapters, (in the process of discarding a good number of equally fascinating ones by his own admission) with a ‘half’ chapter between each. These half chapters explore themes such as ‘The Dictionary Gets its day in Court’, and ‘Ignorance, Pure Ignorance: Of Omissions, Ambiguities, and Plain Old Blunders.’ Some of the ‘books’ featured are in fact volumes of tablets depicting ancient laws (as brutal as you can imagine) and dictionaries or simply lists of words. Chapter twenty is ‘Modern Materia Medica’, where Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter’s Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical (1858), aka Gray’s Anatomy (no it is not just a television show) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1952) appear together. It is followed by chapter twenty and a half; ‘Incomplete and Abandoned Projects’, which begins with, ‘In the back alleys of intellectual history are scattered the abandoned wrecks of would-be dictionaries and encyclopedias.’ I find myself compelled to share that never before has a non-fiction book driven me to bed at such an early hour for the sole purpose of reading, or to spontaneously write an unsolicited review in the wee hours. I am usually decidedly more inclined to fall asleep reading fiction or memoir.
What Lynch also offers is some shooting stars, some extra special words pulled back from long ago to make us weep from the sheer beauty of them. In chapter two ‘In the beginning was the word; The first dictionaries’, Lynch gives us Erya an ancient Chinese dictionary that dates back (unconfirmed) to around third century B.C.E.
Poetry or dictionary? You decide:
Explaining the Heaven
‘Round hollow and very blue, this is Heaven. In springtime, Heaven is blue; in summertime, bright; in autumn, clear, in wintertime, Heaven is wide up. These are the four seasons. In springtime, there is a greening sun-warmth; in summer, a reddish enlightening; in autumn a blank storing; and in winter a dark blossom. If all these expressions are harmonious, (the year) is called “jade candle.” The spring gives birth; the autumn grows the adult; in autumn the harvest is completed; and in winter there is a peaceful tranquility. If the harmony of the four seasons is thorough and correct, (the year) is called “illustrious wind.” If the sweet rain comes down to the right time, the many things are at their best, it is called “sweet spring.” This means luck.’
Luck it would seem is not so random and neither are great books. Heaven surrounds us; in the tendered garden and in our changing seasons, and from one bibliophile to any other, and on the reference shelf.
What Lynch also offers is some shooting stars, some extra special words pulled back from long ago to make us weep from the sheer beauty of them. In chapter two ‘In the beginning was the word; The first dictionaries’, Lynch gives us Erya an ancient Chinese dictionary that dates back (unconfirmed) to around third century B.C.E.
Poetry or dictionary? You decide:
Explaining the Heaven
‘Round hollow and very blue, this is Heaven. In springtime, Heaven is blue; in summertime, bright; in autumn, clear, in wintertime, Heaven is wide up. These are the four seasons. In springtime, there is a greening sun-warmth; in summer, a reddish enlightening; in autumn a blank storing; and in winter a dark blossom. If all these expressions are harmonious, (the year) is called “jade candle.” The spring gives birth; the autumn grows the adult; in autumn the harvest is completed; and in winter there is a peaceful tranquility. If the harmony of the four seasons is thorough and correct, (the year) is called “illustrious wind.” If the sweet rain comes down to the right time, the many things are at their best, it is called “sweet spring.” This means luck.’
Luck it would seem is not so random and neither are great books. Heaven surrounds us; in the tendered garden and in our changing seasons, and from one bibliophile to any other, and on the reference shelf.
February 23, 2021
Jack Lynch's "You Could Look It Up" (2016) is a book for lexicographers and librarians by an English professor. Lynch teaches at Rutgers University-Newark, and his passion for words and language is apparent throughout the book. He is the author of seventeen other books, all related to our knowledge of words and information.
The book's central premise is to encourage the use and love of all types of reference books. In Lynch's words, "You Could Look It Up is partly a call to read, or at least read in, these books, and to get to know the people who wrote them" (2016). And so, Lynch tells the reader about fifty reference books and the people who wrote them. The book's design pairs two reference works a chapter and compares and contrasts them – their history, authors, intended audience, reception, length, and more. There are mini-chapters in-between that provide some general history or fun facts about the reference genre. The first chapter covers The Codes of Hammurabi and Corpus Juris Civilis by Justinian, and the last chapter contains The Guinness Book of Records by Norris and Ross McWhirter and Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott. The book travels through most Western history and parts of Eastern history, touching on music, medicine, politics, art, and lexicography.
Lynch makes his argument by personalizing works that are traditionally relatively dry. He adds humor, mystery, and context to texts that we might not have given any thought to. The history of these texts expands the reader's mind regarding the context in which they were written and the biases and intrinsic errors in the texts. Nothing exists in a vacuum, including reference books. Their contributors all left their marks on the books. No piece of writing can ever be entirely divorced from its author. The texts all hold some sort of bias and can teach the reader about the author, their community, country, and period.
The book is definitely for a niche group, though, that is, people who care about reference books in the first place. This limits his audience from the general public to people who love words, information, and history, leaving librarians, English majors, lexicographers, and your intrepid word nerd. For that audience, the book will inspire them and teach them about the reference texts they may have taken for granted while broadening their arsenal for research.
Lynch's love of the reference book shines through this book. His passion for history gives new life to some texts that we might have forgotten about. For the right audience, this book is worth a read. Reference may have changed drastically throughout the course of 2,000 years, but it has something to offer all of us. Wikipedia might be the way of the future, but it would be foolish indeed to forget all about stone tablets.
The book's central premise is to encourage the use and love of all types of reference books. In Lynch's words, "You Could Look It Up is partly a call to read, or at least read in, these books, and to get to know the people who wrote them" (2016). And so, Lynch tells the reader about fifty reference books and the people who wrote them. The book's design pairs two reference works a chapter and compares and contrasts them – their history, authors, intended audience, reception, length, and more. There are mini-chapters in-between that provide some general history or fun facts about the reference genre. The first chapter covers The Codes of Hammurabi and Corpus Juris Civilis by Justinian, and the last chapter contains The Guinness Book of Records by Norris and Ross McWhirter and Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott. The book travels through most Western history and parts of Eastern history, touching on music, medicine, politics, art, and lexicography.
Lynch makes his argument by personalizing works that are traditionally relatively dry. He adds humor, mystery, and context to texts that we might not have given any thought to. The history of these texts expands the reader's mind regarding the context in which they were written and the biases and intrinsic errors in the texts. Nothing exists in a vacuum, including reference books. Their contributors all left their marks on the books. No piece of writing can ever be entirely divorced from its author. The texts all hold some sort of bias and can teach the reader about the author, their community, country, and period.
The book is definitely for a niche group, though, that is, people who care about reference books in the first place. This limits his audience from the general public to people who love words, information, and history, leaving librarians, English majors, lexicographers, and your intrepid word nerd. For that audience, the book will inspire them and teach them about the reference texts they may have taken for granted while broadening their arsenal for research.
Lynch's love of the reference book shines through this book. His passion for history gives new life to some texts that we might have forgotten about. For the right audience, this book is worth a read. Reference may have changed drastically throughout the course of 2,000 years, but it has something to offer all of us. Wikipedia might be the way of the future, but it would be foolish indeed to forget all about stone tablets.
June 2, 2019
In one of the mini-essays inserted between twenty-five roughly chronological chapters of this book, Jack Lynch suggests that any reader nerdy enough to be still reading the book ought to join the Dictionary Society of North America—and he provides a web address. Actually one does not have to be a nerd to enjoy You Could Look It Up, though that would no doubt be helpful.
Lynch makes the point that reference books have “users” rather than “readers”; and this particular semi-reference, with its punchy chapters and discursive anecdotes, will be appreciated by many book lovers even if they have never say, contemplated reading a volume of an encyclopedia straight through. If they don’t like one brief chapter, they can (like encyclopedia users) flee to another. The book has no real narrative, no story line. Furthermore, in the words of a print reviewer, the book has “no sense of proportion,” for instance, giving more space to Hoyle’s Treatise on the Game of Whist than to the monumentally influential Encyclopédie (1751-72). For all that, the book is great fun; and even nerds know how to enjoy simple pleasures.
Lynch makes the point that reference books have “users” rather than “readers”; and this particular semi-reference, with its punchy chapters and discursive anecdotes, will be appreciated by many book lovers even if they have never say, contemplated reading a volume of an encyclopedia straight through. If they don’t like one brief chapter, they can (like encyclopedia users) flee to another. The book has no real narrative, no story line. Furthermore, in the words of a print reviewer, the book has “no sense of proportion,” for instance, giving more space to Hoyle’s Treatise on the Game of Whist than to the monumentally influential Encyclopédie (1751-72). For all that, the book is great fun; and even nerds know how to enjoy simple pleasures.
November 5, 2024
I love reference books, and I love books about reference books.
In the past couple of years, I've read about encyclopedias ("All The Knowledge In The World" by Simon Garfield), dictionaries ("Word By Word" by Kory Stamper), the Encyclopedia Britannica ("Everything Explained That Is Explainable" by Denis Boyles) and Webster's Third New International Dictionary ("The Story Of Ain't" by David Skinner). I've also read reference-adjacent books about indexes ("Index, A History Of The" by Dennis Duncan) and alphabetical order ("A Place For Everything" by Judith Flanders).
This book pulls it all together, from the most ancient "books" found (actually inscriptions) to digital references. In writeups of about 50 different books, plus short asides into other facets, the author digs up some interesting facts and history.
The thing that bothered me were the occasional grammatical errors and repetitions. Also, book titles sometimes were translated two different ways in one chapter. Needed a better editor!
In the past couple of years, I've read about encyclopedias ("All The Knowledge In The World" by Simon Garfield), dictionaries ("Word By Word" by Kory Stamper), the Encyclopedia Britannica ("Everything Explained That Is Explainable" by Denis Boyles) and Webster's Third New International Dictionary ("The Story Of Ain't" by David Skinner). I've also read reference-adjacent books about indexes ("Index, A History Of The" by Dennis Duncan) and alphabetical order ("A Place For Everything" by Judith Flanders).
This book pulls it all together, from the most ancient "books" found (actually inscriptions) to digital references. In writeups of about 50 different books, plus short asides into other facets, the author digs up some interesting facts and history.
The thing that bothered me were the occasional grammatical errors and repetitions. Also, book titles sometimes were translated two different ways in one chapter. Needed a better editor!
July 21, 2017
The reference section in my public library recently became much smaller. The library made room for additional computer terminals. Before the Internet, the way to get reliable information was through reference books (or clay tablets). As the title suggests, Lynch takes the reader back to earliest sources of reference material in the ancient world and leads us into the modern era of Wikipedia.
The book reads quickly. Lynch is a superb communicator who writes short chapters to introduce two different reference works of a similar subject matter and in similar time periods. He also includes stories about the movers and shakers and writers behind reference works themselves.
There are a ton of reference works available to us. Lynch does not cover every one. But, the reader will enjoy learning a little bit about the remarkable array of reference works he introduces us to.
The book reads quickly. Lynch is a superb communicator who writes short chapters to introduce two different reference works of a similar subject matter and in similar time periods. He also includes stories about the movers and shakers and writers behind reference works themselves.
There are a ton of reference works available to us. Lynch does not cover every one. But, the reader will enjoy learning a little bit about the remarkable array of reference works he introduces us to.
September 22, 2023
Really enjoyed this.
Everyone who I told that I was reading this said this sounds really dry and dull. But if you've always loved reference books, it's a treat.
Sure, depending on your interests, some chapters are less enjoyable than others. But overall, if this sounds like your thing, give it a go.
None of the chapters are particularly long and there are mini-chapters in between each one that are particularly enlightening.
Everyone who I told that I was reading this said this sounds really dry and dull. But if you've always loved reference books, it's a treat.
Sure, depending on your interests, some chapters are less enjoyable than others. But overall, if this sounds like your thing, give it a go.
None of the chapters are particularly long and there are mini-chapters in between each one that are particularly enlightening.
February 5, 2025
It's not bad, and the author is a good writer and conscientious researcher, but nothing about it is particularly compelling. Perhaps that would be asking to much about a book on reference works, but nonetheless the book rarely rises above being a mere list: here's an encyclopedia of ancient Chinese characters, here's one about computers. I found myself secretly thinking: I guess that's interesting, but so what?
January 9, 2019
This is a fascinating book. Full of all sorts of interesting information. At times it was a bit repetitive because of how it was organised, but it is difficult to see how that could have been avoided. And it was very easy to read. It is a credit to the author's writing skills that a book about reference books made me laugh out loud in places.
March 22, 2023
Best read in a while.
If you want the background on reference books from Schott’s to Britanica and Johnson to The OED in relatively short and interesting chapters this is one to seek out.
Lynch has a steady style that misses nothing but also does not bury you in detail.
As a reference book in itself or a relatively easy read check it out.
If you want the background on reference books from Schott’s to Britanica and Johnson to The OED in relatively short and interesting chapters this is one to seek out.
Lynch has a steady style that misses nothing but also does not bury you in detail.
As a reference book in itself or a relatively easy read check it out.
January 7, 2024
If one of the reasons you use Goodreads is to keep track of the books you've read, you're scratching an itch that our species has had for millennia: the urge to list and catalog. Examples "from Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia" abound in Lynch's book, which is cleverly structured into chapters comparing and contrasting two similarly-dated reference works throughout the ages.
February 24, 2018
Having perused many a reference book, Google and Wikipedia in the past, this was quite a fun read. We've come a long way but information, however you look for it, and however you find it, is still important and this book proves that in it's own way.
Read
April 14, 2021A fascinating book about the range of reference books from the obscure to the familiar with a historical account of the reference books of the past.
Not a riveting read for the average reader but for a target audience a compelling narrative.
Not a riveting read for the average reader but for a target audience a compelling narrative.
March 30, 2019
Learned a lot about reference books. Only complaint is he didn’t mention H.L. Mencken’s “The American Language”, one of my favorite reference books.
March 26, 2021
Great for info-nerds. Everything from multi-ton stone tablets to Wikipedia. Delightful, for some of us at any rate.
February 21, 2017
A little on the dry side, but full of useful and fascinating information.
March 28, 2016
I suppose you'd expect a librarian to really enjoy a book about influential reference books. And you'd be right. This book is pretty amazing, bordering on becoming a reference book itself.
In 25 chapters, Lynch juxtaposes two reference works that have made an impact on the recording and retrieval of some aspect of knowledge. Sometimes the books are very much alike. Sometimes, they approach a topic in very different ways. And sometimes, their creation is separated by centuries. But always, they have something to say about the way scholars approached the knowledge at hand.
Each book (or scroll, or stone tablet) is considered over a few pages, including a brief history of the genre concerned. And each gets its own table, complete with title, compiler, organization, original publication date, pages, entries, total words, and other factors, depending on the title: weight, size, and the latest edition. Interspersed between the chapters are "half chapters" (e.g., Chapter 15 ½) that cover an aspect of reference works or publishing (out of print, reading dictionaries, "mountweazels", abandoned projects, alphabetizing). It's all quite a bit of fun.
I fan across some old friends from my library education days that I hadn't thought about in a long while -- I just don't use them in my current professional life. But it was great to run across them again, and this book gave me quite an appreciation for all the hard work and clever thinking that has gone into finding and organizing human knowledge. And how it has all changed so much over the past 25 years.
A fantastic book -- all my fellow librarians should read this!
In 25 chapters, Lynch juxtaposes two reference works that have made an impact on the recording and retrieval of some aspect of knowledge. Sometimes the books are very much alike. Sometimes, they approach a topic in very different ways. And sometimes, their creation is separated by centuries. But always, they have something to say about the way scholars approached the knowledge at hand.
Each book (or scroll, or stone tablet) is considered over a few pages, including a brief history of the genre concerned. And each gets its own table, complete with title, compiler, organization, original publication date, pages, entries, total words, and other factors, depending on the title: weight, size, and the latest edition. Interspersed between the chapters are "half chapters" (e.g., Chapter 15 ½) that cover an aspect of reference works or publishing (out of print, reading dictionaries, "mountweazels", abandoned projects, alphabetizing). It's all quite a bit of fun.
I fan across some old friends from my library education days that I hadn't thought about in a long while -- I just don't use them in my current professional life. But it was great to run across them again, and this book gave me quite an appreciation for all the hard work and clever thinking that has gone into finding and organizing human knowledge. And how it has all changed so much over the past 25 years.
A fantastic book -- all my fellow librarians should read this!
January 7, 2025
If you think what is essentially a reference book about reference book would be dull, that, in my mind, would make perfect sense. You Could Look It Up, a reference book about reference books, is vastly entertaining.
Jack Lynch, an English professor at Rutgers, cobbles together descriptions and histories of fifty books, from the obvious (medical manuals to law journals to dictionaries) to the less so (lists of banned books, names of all the saints, list and rating of prostitutes in France). He also adds small little chapters that take on various interesting tidbits of info.
Lynch is a bit like Bill Bryson, gleefully finding interesting facts and expressing them with great curiosity and gusto. He is just as fascinated by the humans that created these books as much as the books themselves. He also places them in their historical and sociological context.
There are plenty of tidbits that can be brought out at parties: the reason Americans spell it color as opposed to colour is because Noah Webster hated Samuel Johnson's anti-American bent so wanted to create an American form of English, for example. Or the fact that the Guinness Book of World Records has originally conceived for and printed by Guinness, the beer company, to settle bets in pubs.
You Could Look it Up is chock full of facts like this. You will rarely be bored and it will awaken your fascination with human nature and the fine art of categorizing.
Jack Lynch, an English professor at Rutgers, cobbles together descriptions and histories of fifty books, from the obvious (medical manuals to law journals to dictionaries) to the less so (lists of banned books, names of all the saints, list and rating of prostitutes in France). He also adds small little chapters that take on various interesting tidbits of info.
Lynch is a bit like Bill Bryson, gleefully finding interesting facts and expressing them with great curiosity and gusto. He is just as fascinated by the humans that created these books as much as the books themselves. He also places them in their historical and sociological context.
There are plenty of tidbits that can be brought out at parties: the reason Americans spell it color as opposed to colour is because Noah Webster hated Samuel Johnson's anti-American bent so wanted to create an American form of English, for example. Or the fact that the Guinness Book of World Records has originally conceived for and printed by Guinness, the beer company, to settle bets in pubs.
You Could Look it Up is chock full of facts like this. You will rarely be bored and it will awaken your fascination with human nature and the fine art of categorizing.
June 7, 2016
Who can resist a tome that begins with Hammurabi’s code (published c. 1754 B.C.; organization: introduction, property, persons; weight: four tons) and ends with Schott’s Original Miscellany (published: 2002; organization: “God only knows”; weight: 8 oz.)? You Can Look It Up has heft but is delightfully organized. Twenty-five chapters each take a pair of works with similar goals and compare them. Along with the expected dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopedias, the reader meets a collection of logarithmic tables, the Catholic Church’s index of banned books, The Cricketer’s Almanack, and much more. Twenty-five “half-chapters” focus on aspects of referencing. For example, the half-chapter on the use of alphabetical order discusses when and why alphabetizing began and why the Internet may be making it irrelevant.
As an early beneficiary of the Ohio College Library Center, I appreciated the shout-out to OCLC, which introduced the first electronic library catalogue in 1971, a project that expanded worldwide and is now called the Online Computer Library Center.
As an early beneficiary of the Ohio College Library Center, I appreciated the shout-out to OCLC, which introduced the first electronic library catalogue in 1971, a project that expanded worldwide and is now called the Online Computer Library Center.
January 16, 2017
A surprisingly entertaining and engaging sampling of reference books for "Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia".
Lynch describes the actual books but he also writes about the historical context in which they were created, the personalities of the creators and the political, practical and financial realities that were part of the process.
His "half chapters" are entertaining essays on a whole variety of topics related to the business of making these "treasure houses" of knowledge from whether "index learning" (being able to access facts without reading the whole book is degrading the depth of learning) to plagiarism (and how that concept has changed over time).
A candidate for the BML. And YOU COULD LOOK IT UP did prompt me to order a used copy of the WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY to add to the collection.
Lynch describes the actual books but he also writes about the historical context in which they were created, the personalities of the creators and the political, practical and financial realities that were part of the process.
His "half chapters" are entertaining essays on a whole variety of topics related to the business of making these "treasure houses" of knowledge from whether "index learning" (being able to access facts without reading the whole book is degrading the depth of learning) to plagiarism (and how that concept has changed over time).
A candidate for the BML. And YOU COULD LOOK IT UP did prompt me to order a used copy of the WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY to add to the collection.
September 10, 2016
I recall when the reference section of the library was one of the main reasons for visiting. Because the internet has made much of the reference library obsolete, this book feels like a bit of a eulogy. Nevertheless, Jack Lynch has packed this book with tons of interesting information, stories about unusual characters (obsessive catalogers can be an eccentric lot), and some stretches of tedium as he goes over some of the intricacies of lexicography.
This book about reference books also takes on the form of a reference book, in that the chapters mostly stand alone and there is only a week narrative arc to the enterprise. That means you don't have to feel guilty about just reading the chapters you're interested in (although you might feel a bit guilty if you jump straight to the chapter on sex manuals).
This book about reference books also takes on the form of a reference book, in that the chapters mostly stand alone and there is only a week narrative arc to the enterprise. That means you don't have to feel guilty about just reading the chapters you're interested in (although you might feel a bit guilty if you jump straight to the chapter on sex manuals).
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