This book considers the manuscript as a "total social object," showing the profound interaction between books, culture, and society from a comparative perspective.

A critical reflection on the history of Greco-Latin books between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, this work employs an original method that is a blend of "book sciences" and social sciences. Certain phenomena considered characteristic of the modern and contemporary era (such as the emergence of the “common” reader and “consumer literature,” the “death of the author,” and the “dematerialization of the text”) have marked the history of ancient and medieval Western books on several occasions.