Dennis Duncan’s entertaining and informative “Index, A History of the” moves from the 13th-century origins of the form to the world of digital search engines.
Before reading “Index, A History of the,” an appealingly titled new book by Dennis Duncan, I had never thought of the index as much more than a tool — a handy list of subjects and proper names, typically at the end of a nonfiction book, guiding me to the page(s) where I might find the information I seek.
There are of course some indexes that make you want to linger; a reader of Martin Amis’s memoir, “Experience,” will find a strikingly long list of curious items nested under “dental problems” (“of animals,” “Bellow on,” “and dentifrice purchase,” etc., etc.). But, Duncan says, we usually turn to an index as a “convenience” and “timesaver.” It’s like a map. In fact, it is a map — an indicator of a spatial relationship. It points (like an index finger) to a place (a page number), showing you the way.