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Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

by Flanders, Judith
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9781541601161 Basic Books

From a New York Times bestselling historian, the "truly revelatory" (Wall Street Journal) story of how the alphabet ordered our world

A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. Once we've learned our ABCs as children, few of us ever think of them again, but alphabetical order plays a material role in our adult lives. From school registers to electoral rolls, from dictionaries and encyclopedias to library shelves, the alphabet has ordered our lives, often invisibly. Yet the birth of alphabetization was a constant struggle: Medieval clergy felt that its use would upend the divine order of creation; elite institutions like Harvard and Yale long ranked students by the social status of their parents, rather than ordering them from A to Z. But eventually alphabetical order triumphed.

With wry humor, historian Judith Flanders offers a fascinating history of how the alphabet ordered our world.

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Product details

BrandBasic Books
Pub dateMay 3, 2022
ISBN-101541601165
ISBN-139781541601161
Paperback368.0 pages
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions8.25 × 0.92 × 5.5 in
Weight1 lb
Last updated 2026-07-26 20:34
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