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Mind the gap
Shop talk What he learned in the newsroom Mr. Boffo lays an eggcorn Curse of the mummy's tummy More in Word Watch  |
« Grab whatever you can | Main | Vonnegut and son » Friday, April 13, 2007And 'round he goesAs home offices go, here's a sweet setup: Anthony Grafton, a historian of early modern Europe at Princeton, has one sophisticated information-management device on his desk ... and another just behind him:  It's a book wheel, a contraption first made use of by erudite scholars in the late 1500s. Grafton's was built for a museum exhibit on early book culture that he curated, and he decided to hang on to it. (Disclosure: I wrote the profile accompanying this photo.) It's stocked with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and even astronomical reference works. The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach also found this illustration striking, as did his readers, who get off a few good riffs in the comments. ("Grafton considers himself an intellectual, and yet he only has eight shelves on his reading wheel," one writes. "Mine has sixteen.") What would you put on your reading wheel? Achenbach's first thought is "The Baseball Encyclopedia." Posted by Christopher Shea at 02:58 PM
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