Pi: A Hodge-Podge of the Letters, Papers and Addresses

This book began as a modest brochure with a dozen or twenty pieces, to be printed handsomely in 18-point type, for presentation to Bruce Rogers’s friends. Then the indefatigable Mr. Shapiro (whoever that was) got busy and turned up more material, chiefly from his own collection. At every ten new discoveries they lowered the size of type to keep the book within bounds. But when they got down to 10-point type Rogers balked. One of William Morris’s dicta was that no book should be printed in anything smaller than 10-point (or Long Primer, as he called). Anyway, this collection of short essays, notes, and letters about book design, typography, and printing provides good insight into what the most celebrated book designer of the twentieth century thought about book design, typography, and printing. More reader than looker, it has a small section of plates at the back.