A fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book...I lost count of the times I exclaimed with delight when I read a nugget of information I hadnt encountered before Val McDermid The TimesMost of what we say about books is really about the words inside them the rosy nostalgic glow for childhood reading the lifetime companionship of a muchloved novel. But books are things as well as words objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines loosen their leaves and write in their margins so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are as Stephen King put it a uniquely portable magic. Here Emma Smith shows us why.Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands exploring when why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millenniums worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small Smith reveals that as much as their contents it is books physical form their bookhood that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Coopers Riders to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese this composite artisanal object has for centuries embodied and extended relationships between readers nations ideologies and cultures in significant and unpredictable ways. Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books Portable Magic hails the rise of the massmarket paperback and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers and proposes new definitions of a classicand even of the book itself. Ultimately it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal and more turbulent than we tend to imagine.