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Review Articles 

Paperbacks 

The Paperbound Book in America: the 
History of Paperbacks and Their European 
Background. By Frank L. Schick. New 
York: R . R. Bowker Co., 1958. xviii, 262p. 
illus. bibliog. $7.50. 

There is a whole generation of readers 
today which must take completely for 
granted the profusion of paperback books 
on sale in drug stores, subway and bus 
stations, supermarkets, and other places 
likely and unlikely. T h e pattern for paper-
backs had already been established when 
this generation came upon the reading 
scene, and its members, if they ever think 
about it at all, probably would not admit 
that there are any unlikely places to find 
printed books offered for sale, and would 
find it hard to believe that there was ever 
a time when things were any different. But 
just a half step ahead of this generation is 
the one which can remember when things 
were different. Its members can often be 
identified through their inclination to refer 
to paperbacks generically as "pocketbooks" 
in the same way and for the same historic 
reason their parents spoke of electric re-
frigerators as "frigidaires." These are the 
people who are bringing up their babies on 
multiple copies of the paperbound edition 
of Dr. Spock (having learned that when 
the baby has attained sufficient mobility and 
strength to reach and tear up books, it is 
time for a new copy of Spock, and probably 
for a new baby as well), and the ubiquitous 
paperback has become so much an accepted 
part of their lives, with Spock for the 
nursery, cookbooks for the kitchen, dic-
tionaries for the reference shelf, and home 
repair manuals for the workshop, that they 
too are beginning to lose sight of the fact 
that the flow of paperbacks grew from a 
trickle to a deluge during the last fifteen 
years. 

I t is appropriate, then, that a formal, doc-
umented history of the rise and diffusion of 
the paperback should appear now so that 

this development can be placed in its proper 
perspective. This perspective, as it is de-
lineated in The Paperbound Book in Amer-
ica, establishes the evolutionary, rather than 
revolutionary, development of paperbacks. 
T o be sure, the year 1939, when Pocket 
Books, Inc. launched its first ten titles, can 
be cited as the opening phase of what ap-
pears to have been a revolution in pub-
lishing, but, as is shown in this book, the 
revolution was not in the publishing format 
but rather in the methods adopted for pro-
motion and distribution. T o support this 
contention the history of the book is traced 
from the very beginning of printing, with 
emphasis laid on the various attempts to 
extend the ownership of books, and their 
consequent influence on ideas and people, 
by reducing production costs. Viewed in this 
light, the paperback of today, everywhere 
available and priced within reach of vir-
tually everyone, is the culmination of the 
effort which began when the printing press 
made it possible to multiply copies of books; 
was advanced by the scientific and technical 
developments which yielded cheaper paper, 
and cheaper and faster methods of type-
setting and binding; and brought to fruition 
only within the last twenty years, when 
radical changes in distribution and pro-
motion techniques finally tapped a market 
to match the productive potential. 

T h e first part of this book is devoted to 
the history of inexpensive book publishing 
(a term which is sometimes, but not always, 

synonomous with paper covers), in Britain, 
continental Europe, and in the United States 
prior to 1930. T o a certain extent, of course, 
this is a summary history of the book, the 
details of which have a familiar sound to 
anyone who has an interest in the subject. 
But it is told from the special standpoint of 
this study so that the Tauchnitz editions, 
Penguin Books, the American dime novels, 
and cheap "libraries" of the nineteenth 
century assume their proper place in the 
progression toward the contemporary Amer-
ican paperback. 

Part I I is given to a topical and chrono-
logical account of American paperback pub-
lishing between 1939 and 1957, including an 
account of the government's entrance into 
the paperback field (in cooperation with the 

252 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



Council on Books in Wartime) with its 
Armed Services Editions, those convenient 
and well-chosen books which made bearable 
the inevitable and interminable military 
formation, waiting in line; the textbooks 
published for the Armed Forces Institute; 
and Overseas Editions, Inc., a joint govern-
ment and private enterprise project which 
made possible the widespread distribution of 
cheap books in the liberated areas of Europe 
and Asia late in the war. Other topics cov-
ered in this section include a summary of 
changing techniques in the manufacture of 
paperbacks, a survey of the observable 
trends in the kinds of titles produced, dis-
tribution methods and facilities in both the 
United States and abroad, and relationships 
between authors and publishers. T h e last is 
concerned with contracts and royalties, espe-
cially as they differ between hard- and soft-
cover publishing. There is also a brief history 
of the censorship of paperbacks, an activity 
which has had to adapt itself to the pecu-
liarities of this form of publishing and has 
done so with a degree of success that makes 
many people uncomfortable. T h e treatment 
of each of these subjects is necessarily brief; 
each of them is worthy of getting, and ca-
pable of supporting, extensive study, and 
one of the values of Dr. Schick's book is the 
definition of areas which undoubtedly will 
be given detailed examination. 

I n many ways Part I I I , a list and descrip-
tion of the contemporary American pub-
lishers of paperbacks, is the most interesting 
and valuable section. Here is where the 
revolutionary aspects of the paperback phe-
nomenon, the promotion and distribution 
methods, are discussed, with a rather long 
account of the cheap book's breakthrough to 
the mass market through the pioneer efforts 
of Pocket Books, Inc. Like all contemporary 
history this account has been created largely 
from the written and spoken recollections 
of the participants and still retains much 
of the excitement of the events. I n addition 
to Pocket Books there are brief histories of 
about seventy-five other producers of paper-
backs, divided into groups of exclusive 
paperback publishers, magazine, trade, text-
book, religious, and university press pub-
lishers. T h e list is impressive, even to one 
who conscientiously searches the racks of a 

well-stocked store at regular intervals. In-
evitably, considering the still burgeoning 
state of paperback publishing, the list is not 
complete; it was probably incomplete the 
day the final draft of the manuscript went 
to the printer and would require a quarterly 
or even a weekly supplement to keep it up to 
date. But as it stands it is an eloquent testi-
monial to the flourishing state of paperback 
publishing to about the latter half of 1958, 
and also a very useful reference tool for 
identification of the various paperback lines. 

This study is accompanied by eight pages 
of illustrations and completed by a selected 
bibliography. T h e illustrations, photographs 
of some of the stages in the development of 
the paperbound book, add little to the 
dimensions of this survey, although it must 
be admitted there will be a mild surprise 
for many in seeing the picture of a paper-
back incunabulum (Hans Schonsperger's 
1482 edition of Von Ordnung der Gesund-
heit), a certain pleasure i n viewing the busy 
pictorial covers of the dime and nickel 
novels, and a little nostalgia in re-encounter-
ing the no-nonsense military covers of the 
Armed Services Editions. T h e balance of the 
illustrations are of contemporary paperbacks, 
and while they admittedly show trends in 
cover art, as well as a trend can be shown 
this close to the fact, the covers reproduced 
are too familiar, either as titles or as types, 
to have much impact on the contemporary 
reader, although changes in taste and tech-
nique may make them more meaningful in 
the very near future. Although the biblio-
graphy necessarily includes many of the 
same titles that turn up in support of any 
history of the book, the section devoted to 
periodical articles and separate book chap-
ters will send the searcher to journals he 
normally might not consider, titles like 
Chemical Week, Law Library Journal, 
Chemical Age, and Business Week. 

I t always seems a pity when books about 
books are not the best examples of their 
kind, and typographically this book leaves 
much to be desired. I t is also regrettable 
when a title which deserves a permanent 
place in the bibliography of bookmaking 
exhibits so many typographical errors. Nei-
ther of these elements affects the content of 
the book and is probably only further 

MAY 1959 253 



evidence of the kind of sentimentality self-
proclaimed book lovers like to allow them-
selves. 

There is increasing evidence of a quicken-
ing interest in the history of American pub-
lishing. This interest is bound to result in 
much more being written about paperbacks 
and their part in the reciprocal relationship 
between publishing and society. Points of 
departure for dozens of studies are estab-
lished by The Paperbound Book in America 
and it should form a foundation from which 
further investigations will arise.—Howard 
A. Sullivan, University of Detroit Library. 

Information Storage 

A n d Retrieval 
Information Storage and Retrieval—Theory, 

Systems, and Devices. Edited by Mortimer 
Taube and Harold Wooster. New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1958. 228p. 
(Columbia University Studies in Library 

Service, no. 10.) 

T h e A i r Force Office of Scientific Research, 
through contract with Documentation Inc., 
organized a symposium in Washington, D . C. 
on March 17-18, 1958, which was designed 
to explore the theoretical and engineering 
approaches to the solution of information 
storage and retrieval problems. More spe-
cifically, the recurring leit-motif throughout 
the symposium was the desire to secure the 
emergence of some "common agreement 
concerning the nature of the problem or 
problems and the direction in which so-
lutions are likely to lie. . . ." 

T h e careful preparation for the sym-
posium is reflected in the first part of this 
publication, the six working papers which 
define the scope and limits of the problem, 
the historical solutions, the present state of 
theory, and of devices and systems, as well 
as the possible future tendencies in these 
areas. T h e rigor of concept formation is 
reflected in the "Terminological Standards," 
terms and their definitions as used in the 
working papers and as a guide to the in-
vited discussants. I n themselves, the working 
papers serve as a crystallization of the ap-

proaches to this field by the people engaged 
in the development of information storage 
and retrieval systems and concerned with the 
underlying theoretical constructions. T h e 
formulation of concepts, and the very 
language employed in describing the re-
lationships under consideration, may strike 
an unfamiliar note to the traditional li-
brarian without familiarity with the mathe-
matical and computer-engineering flavored 
orientation of the text. Nevertheless, it re-
quires no major adjustments to identify the 
library relatedness of the working papers, or 
to appreciate the purpose of the questions 
posed by each of them. 

T h e discussion which follows the working 
papers, comprising the second part of this 
book, permits more than one assessment. I f 
the success of the symposium were to rest on 
the agreements achieved through the report-
ed discussion, it will have failed. T o the ex-
tent that positive results are recognized, they 
emerge by exhibiting the wide divergence of 
views, the totally variant approaches, and 
the inherent difficulty of disciplining discus-
sants with a diversity of background. Each 
of the discussion topics was related to the 
working papers and was introduced by a pre-
pared statement delivered by one of the dis-
cussants. I n a number of instances the discus-
sion departed radically from the intended 
subject into quite unpredicted directions. Dr. 
Taube's introductory statement on " T h e 
Logic of Retrieval Devices" was followed by 
an animated and even emotionally charged 
discussion on the relationship between com-
puters and the human brain, quite the liveli-
est discussion throughout the symposium; it 
did not, however follow from or contribute 
to Dr. Taube's discussion outline. 

T h e editors faced a formidable problem in 
editing these discussions and reducing them 
to manageable size for publication. T h e 
working papers will undoubtedly have a 
longer valued reference use; the reported 
discussion, though lacking the preconceived 
structure of the working papers, will have 
considerable interest and value to the dis-
criminating reader. Such discrimination will 
tend to seek comparisons with the eventual 
proceedings of the International Conference 
on Scientific Information similarly held in 
Washington in November of 1958. T h e par-

254 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES