Books by Glenn
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve written, co-written, and edited many books, some across several editions. The following are currently available for purchase. (For details about Aperiodical LLC, read this page.)
Six Centuries of Type & Printing
The letterpress-printed, hardbound edition of Six Centuries of Type & Printing
If you ever wondered how the craft of printing was invented and how it evolved, this book answers that question and many others. Starting with Chinese and Korean printing before Gutenberg, Six Centuries of Type and Printing traces the development of type design, type manufacture, presses, and printing through the present digital era with many stops along the way. This book explains how many aspects of printing and type remain the same, despite a shift from metal to photography to bits, across almost six centuries of constant improvement.
The book comes in two editions. The print edition was composed in hot-metal Monotype Bembo by Effra Press in England. Illustrations were printed from zinc plates. The book was printed by letterpress in London by Hand and Eye Letterpress. Spinner Buchbinderei in Germany handled the hardcover binding, foil stamping, and slipcase. It’s a luxurious 64 pages of illustrated history that used historical and modern methods to come into being.
Order now and it ships worldwide immediately. The print edition includes the ebook version, sent as a link via email. The ebook edition is also available for separate purchase.
See photos of the edition in this album.
The hand-bound letterpress edition
Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It
This ebook is a collection of 10 researched and reported articles and essays about type, printing, and language: the history of SHOUTING WITH CAPITALS, Google’s effort to make a font with all the scripts of all the languages in the world, archiving a Web site for 10,000 years, a look at Walt Whitman’s history as a printer, how letterpress printing has come back from the dead, and more. Read more and purchase the ebook.
A letterpress edition with six of those stories, beautifully handbound by an artisan bookbinder, was created in a numbered edition of 100 plus 25 author’s copies. It sold out in March 2023.
Take Control Books
Take Control Books is nearly 20 years old and I’ve been writing titles for that whole time. As of February 2023, I have 11 actively updated titles that may be of interest, largely focused on Apple products, but also including making sense of USB and Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi, and Zoom:
Take Control of Calendar & Reminders (4th edition)
London Kerning: TypographiC Perambulations around a City That Remembers
London has long been a place where type design and graphic design coalesced, and where the machinery of making fonts and the people with an eye to create them intermingled. London Kerning (2018) captures a slice of both the contemporary part of it and its history, especially regarding type designer Berthold Wolpe. (The print edition is sold out.)
Find out more about the book here. With the passing in mid-2020 of The Type Archive founder and leading light, Sue Shaw, I decided to make the ebook edition available at no cost.
In 2022, the The Type Archive was forced to vacate its premises and relinquish collections it held in trust to the Science Museum Group and other parties.
Other Titles
The Magazine: The Book (Year One)
I collected a few dozen of the features that appeared in the first year of The Magazine into a hardcover book and a longer ebook edition. The ebook edition is now available free. (The hardcover edition is sold out.)
The Magazine: Complete Archives (2012–2014)
The Magazine published nearly 300 non-fiction stories across its 28 months in existence as a fortnightly electronic periodical. We produced 58 issues from October 2012 to December 2014 —over 500,000 words from 150 authors. This entire body of commissioned work has now been put into a high-quality, DRM-free ebook. Purchase your copy now!
Past works by Glenn include:
The Wireless Networking Starter Kit (two editions)
Five-Star Apps
Real World Scanning and Halftones (managing editor, first edition; principal writer, second edition; editor, third edition)
Real World Adobe GoLive (three editions)
A Practical Guide to Networking, Privacy, & Security (for iOS 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12) and Connect & Secure Your iPhone & iPad (for iOS 13/iPadOS 13)