It’s a stepping stool, it’s a booster seat. The telephone book is far more common than the family Bible ever was. Most households did have a family Bible, and though it’s not as common as people like to think, it was used in this sense. People would write important family dates in it – births, deaths, weddings. You can see something like this, though it’s not quite as true, with the family Bible in the 19th century. If everyone had an atlas in their house, it would probably have similar uses as well. What’s the purpose of the phone book – other than bulletproofing trains?Ī. Below, Shea, author of The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads, chats with Zócalo about what the phone book evokes and why it’s worth not only the paper it’s printed on, but billions of dollars. “It’s the most curiously unexamined book, especially considering that it’s the most frequently published book in the history of publishing.” And other than being a book, the phone book can be a stepping stool, a booster seat, and most inventively, in a story Shea was convinced was urban legend, bullet proofing: the perfect size for the hollow walls of railway cars wanting protection from bandits. He left aside catalogues, atlases, and encyclopedias in favor of the phone book. “I’ve been fascinated with reference materials, and why we don’t treat them as interesting books,” said Shea, author of Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. Reading books that nobody reads has become something of a specialty for Ammon Shea.
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