Book Review: Flanders, J. (2020). A Place for Everything. The Curious History of Alphabetical Order. New York: Basic Books

Abstract

Have you ever wondered what Table of Contents, Times Tables (for multiplication), and the Periodic Table have in common? Or how knowledge of alphabetical order spread out of Egypt into the Greek world, the Roman Empire, and eventually the rest of the world? How about organizing principles from subject categories to a widely accepted concept of today: the alphabetical order? Judith Flanders’s A Place for Everything. The Curious History of Alphabetical Order will answer all these questions (plus lots of other similar inquiries) and will take the reader on an enchanting journey of discovery that might clarify the multiple concepts of storing, registering, and filing information.