"A Hymn of Praise to the Palaces of Delight that should grace every street corner. Absolutely exquisite." Ian McMillan. John Bevis is a writer and book-lover on an eccentric quest: to obtain a membership card from every library authority in England. In a ten-year mission criss-crossing the country - from Solihull to Slough, from Cleveland to Cornwall - he enrols at libraries of all shapes and sizes: monuments to Art Deco or Brutalism; a converted corset factory; one even shaped like a pork pie. With the architectural eye of Pevsner and the eavesdropping ear of Bill Bryson, he engages us at every step with anecdotes and apercus about the role of the public library in our national life, while ruing its decline in the age of austerity. As interested in the people he finds as he is in the buildings and their history, he is a humane, witty and erudite guide. The result is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever used a library.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Medical theory and practice of the 1700s developed rapidly, as is evidenced by the extensive collection, which includes descriptions of diseases, their conditions, and treatments. Books on science and technology, agriculture, military technology, natural philosophy, even cookbooks, are all contained here.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT033824London: printed for J. Clarke, J. Shuckburgh, and J. Walter, 1760. 4],61, 3]p; 8