Johann Gutenberg: The Man and His Invention [Hardcover]

Albert Kapr (Author), Douglas Martin (Author, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996

This biography brings together a range of literature to produce an account of the man and his work. The author based his portrait on original documents and references, the majority which are reproduced in the text. He considers the different aspects of Gutenberg's life - inventor, technologist and artist - and explores his personality and achievements within a wide cultural and historical context.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Scolar Pr; 3rd edition (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859281141
• ISBN-13: 978-1859281147
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seminal work by leading Gutenberg scholar, June 18, 2003

By 

Parrish Kelley (East Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Johann Gutenberg: The Man and His Invention (Hardcover)

Kapr's book is the result of his life's research on Gutenberg and a summary of all that was known on the subject by the late 20th century. Some readers might find the book slightly dry and scholarly, but it gives all the familiar and obscure, bizarre and quirky tales about the inventor of printing, and it patiently distinguishes which parts of the legend are speculative and apocryphal from those that deserve to be considered historical fact. Kapr's narrative paints a vivid picture of fifteenth-century southwestern Germany, its social structure and politics and the conditions that set the stage for Gutenberg's achievment. We see Gutenberg's childhood as the son of a wealthy businessman and wine producer and how this could have given him the ideas he later put into practice in his inventions. One of the more interesting and illustrative stories is Gutenberg's invention of metal stamping to manufacture mirrors for the pilgrims at Aachen, a brilliant piece of imaginative work that was blunted by his miscalculation by a year of the date of the Aachen pilgrimmage. Throughout the book we see repeated instances of Gutenberg's restless inventive powers and his benighted (or astonishingly unlucky) career as a businessperson. In the end, Kapr shows how Gutenberg fell afoul of the Pope and was driven out of his home town by the Pope's allies and left to die in obscurity. In addition, the book shows to a small degree the contribution of Peter Schoeffer to the invention and explains why the world's first printing firm was Fust und Schoeffer rather than Gutenberg und Gesellschaft. As a reader with a personal interest in printing and typography and an amateur historian's thirst for more fine details to round out my knowledge of the early Renaissance, I found this book to be unputdownable.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, June 13, 2000

By 

D. Ward (Woodbridge, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Johann Gutenberg: The Man and His Invention (Hardcover)

It gives printers a sense of pride in there fast paced sometimes unappreciated work. It helps people realize that it was a printer who single handedly raised mankind out of the dark ages.