Simon Loxley’s witty Type: The Secret History of Letters was released in Britain last winter, so it is possible that some clever television exec is already working on an adaptation. No kidding if you caught Michael Wood’s BBC series In Search of Shakespeare on public television, you’ll have an idea what to expect.

Loxley’s itinerary includes Gutenberg’s haunts in Mainz, Germany, a metal type repository at the Type Museum and a modern micro-foundry where everything is computerized. He darts around London streets once named for early type designers William Caslon and his son. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were set in a Caslon face, he points out, and Ben Franklin who knew a thing or two about printing was a fan. Loxley also traverses London looking for various incarnations of the London Underground’s famous typeface. Created by Edward Johnston in 1916, touched up in the late 1970s and now licensed for commercial use, the face is one of the earliest examples of corporate identity.

A designer, teacher and typographer, Loxley discusses the nuances of typefaces with aplomb. Indeed, nothing escapes his developed aesthetic: “It costs no more, and takes no more effort, to choose a seat fabric that isn’t visually oppressive,” he writes of a garish bus seat. In the book’s last two chapters one of which is hilariously and ominously titled “Typocalypse” he laments the sometimes detrimental influence of the proliferation of desktop publishing on graphic design.

As with any specialized field, typography is filled with connections between its major players fostered through apprenticeships, bloodthirsty competition, etc. Loxley incorporates mini-bios of these characters (no pun intended) into Type. The result is a funny, informative romp through typography.

Cuba In Mind, edited by Maria Finn Dominguez, is a collection of essays, short fiction, reports and poems by such luminaries as Anthony Trollope, Steven Crane, Graham Greene, Langston Hughes, Elmore Leonard, Oscar Hijuelos and Andrei Codrescu. It is essentially a catchall of impressions by those who have found something to admire in the island and its people. Ernest Hemingway liked the fact that one could raise and fight cocks legally there and shoot live pigeons as a club sport. Allen Ginsberg, who was booted out of the country in 1965, was sympathetic to the Revolution’s basic goals but enraged by its abuse of homosexuals. Reflecting years later on his ill-fated visit, he told a reporter, “Well, the worst thing I said was that I’d heard, by rumor, that Raul Castro [Fidel’s younger brother] was gay. And the second worst thing I said was that Che Guevara was cute.”

G.K. Chesterton once said that the purpose of journalism is to inform the public that Lord Jones is dead, when nobody knew that Lord Jones was alive. The purpose of the Nobel Prize in literature is to inform the public that an author is a great writer, when nobody knew the author existed.

The Nobel news is always electrifying. The laureate’s works are reprinted and resurrected; and his once mundane name assumes a holy aura. Hence The Writer and the World, a new collection of 21 essays, many of them previously published, by 2001 Laureate V.S. Naipaul. A native of Trinidad who has spent most of his life in England, Naipaul excels at finding the universal in the obscure. To study the repercussions of the colonial era, he visits Guyana and Mauritius; peers into Rajasthani politics; analyzes Black Power in Trinidad. To study the fateful marriage between God and greed in America, he wanders through the “Air-Conditioned Bubble” of the 1984 Republican National Convention. And in every instance he applies that “incorruptible scrutiny” for which the Nobel Committee praised him. Naipaul can always be counted on to expose the mimicked thought, the fruitless banality, the emperor’s new clothes.

Two essays stand out. The first, “A Second Visit,” summarizes Naipaul’s notorious contempt for India’s pride in its ancient culture, its spirituality, its self-victimization. The critique rings true, though at times it reeks of an easy Eurocentrism, as if his way is the only way and the whole world should resemble London. In “Our Universal Civilization,” Naipaul argues that the strength of the West lies precisely (and at first glance, paradoxically) in its intellectual “diffidence.” He contrasts the West with Islam, which often rejects Western ideals yet accepts the fruits of Western progress. This theme should be familiar to readers of Naipaul’s two books on Islam, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey and Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples. But what is this “universal civilization?” Who belongs to it? Naipaul mentions two of its fundamental precepts: the Golden Rule and the pursuit of happiness. Naipaul refers to the first as a Christian idea, but it was a Confucian idea long before it was Christian. As for the pursuit of happiness, it is arguably the basis of Buddhism. Naipaul is right to say that a new civilization is forming, and he is wise to distinguish it from both the West and the deliciously redundant “globalized world.” But what the future of this civilization is, even wise Naipaul cannot foretell. Kenneth Champeon is a writer who lives in Thailand.

Some of the happiest times in Paul West’s life were spent as a student at Oxford University in the mid-20th century. It was there that he launched his literary career as a poet. Now a prolific and distinguished author, he has published 22 works of fiction and 14 works of nonfiction, including autobiographies and literary criticism. In his new memoir Oxford Days: An Inclination, West describes the famous institution as a "mellifluous beehive, a whirligig of amateur fascinations." Engaging and insightful, the memoir presents a defining period in the author’s life, a time that grew out of his upbringing by a father who was seriously disabled in World War I and an extraordinarily talented mother who taught music. The piano in their home was in use for as much as 10 hours a day, West remembers. His mother had an exquisite knowledge of grammar, and she gave him a grammar book as soon as he could read.

All this was wonderful preparation for the intellectual challenges Oxford would present. West hardly believed his supervisor John Sparrow when the latter described the value and meaning of the Oxford experience. "At Oxford [Sparrow told him] whatever else you think you are doing, you are unwittingly absorbing something unique and choice a sense of the unfailing caliber of mental things, providing you with indestructible inner resources in after-years. He was right," West writes. "Oxford had, still has, a kind of permanent Zeitgeist, indefinable but unmistakable."

While there, along with budding writers Donald Hall, George Steiner and the poet Elizabeth Jannings, West contributed to a poetry collection that was reviewed in glowing terms in the Times Literary Supplement. West gives us a sense of what makes the university distinctive, from its language, to its religious aspects, to its food and smells. His fond tribute to this venerable institution offers abundant riches to the reader.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

Aside from "holocaust," there is no uglier term to the Jewish people than "blood libel," the historical canard that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood for ritualistic purposes. Throughout the ages, anti-Semites have leveled such accusations to justify their evil behavior.

Helmut Walser Smith examines one of the most contentious examples of this ugly phenomenon in <B>The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town</B>.

The case in question involves the murder and mutilation of an 18-year-old boy in the town of Konitz, Germany, at the turn of the century. The boy’s body was found, in several pieces, by a nearby river. (A warning to readers: Smith is extremely graphic in his depictions of the crime.) Because the remains were devoid of blood (religious laws dictate that all blood must be drained in order for meat to be considered kosher), the townspeople resurrected "blood libel" as the explanation and looked for someone who had the knowledge to perpetrate such a heinous crime. Suspicion fell on Adolph Lewy, a Jewish butcher. As the investigation into the young man’s death progressed, more and more people came forth to offer "testimony," or more accurately, their own hare-brained notions of what happened and how. Anti-Semitic journalists arrived to cover the various hearings and trials, fanning the flames of unrest.

The author, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, offers a brief explanation of the "blood libel" concept and the tragic consequences it often held for the Jews of Europe. He portrays the townspeople of Konitz who offered statements against Lewy as being of such low quality (drunkards or "mental defectives") that it’s amazing anyone in a position of authority could take their testimony seriously. Smith does a fascinating job of trying to prove Levy’s innocence and identify a likely culprit. His book may make readers uncomfortable. If so, it has served a valuable purpose.

<I>Ron Kaplan writes from Montclair, New Jersey</I>.

"The manuscript of an out-of-control writer is not a pretty thing to behold: sloppy, confused, slapdash, disjointed," writes Herman Gollob, author of Me and Shakespeare. "Out of this chaos the editor must bring order—structure, organization, coherence." Now in his early 70s, Gollob is well-known in publishing circles, having served for years as an editor at Little, Brown, Atheneum and Simon & Schuster.

Originally from Texas, he made fortuitous early professional connections that led him into careers as a Hollywood story editor and literary agent. He went on to nurture the talents of writers such as James Clavell, Dan Jenkins, Donald Barthelme and Willie Morris. While his book is, at times, lofty in tone, it is anecdote-laden, rich with gossip and brimming with all things Shakespearean.Gollob, who teaches adult education classes on the Bard at New Jersey’s Caldwell College Lifelong Learning Institute, takes his cue from pertinent Shakespearean quotations, describing his journeys to the Bodleian and Folger Shakespeare libraries, relating his exchanges with students and offering a fair amount of hardcore literary, critical and historical analysis of the Bard’s works and influences.Along the way, he discusses such personal matters as his father’s death from prostate cancer, his mother’s lobotomy and his high regard for his wife, Barbara. He also takes an apparently long-overdue retaliatory swipe at the late actor Lee Strasberg by relating an incident in which Gollob the editor told potential author Strasberg that no one would ever want to read a book as pedantic as the one Strasberg was proposing. It would seem that Strasberg was not as encouraging of Gollob’s early attempts to be an actor as Gollob would have liked.

Martin Brady writes from Nashville.

What are the odds? Two major publishers release memoirs at the same time in the same year, both of which are authored by men of professional bearing who glory in Shakespeare and teach classes on the subject. The coincidences passing strange are worthy of one of the Bard’s own plays.

“The manuscript of an out-of-control writer is not a pretty thing to behold: sloppy, confused, slapdash, disjointed,” writes Herman Gollob, author of Me and Shakespeare. “Out of this chaos the editor must bring order structure, organization, coherence.” Now in his early 70s, Gollob is well-known in publishing circles, having served for years as an editor at Little, Brown, Atheneum and Simon &and Schuster. Originally from Texas, he made fortuitous early professional connections that led him into careers as a Hollywood story editor and literary agent. He went on to nurture the talents of writers such as James Clavell, Dan Jenkins, Donald Barthelme and Willie Morris. While his book is, at times, lofty in tone, it is anecdote-laden, rich with gossip and brimming with all things Shakespearean.

Gollob, who teaches adult education classes on the Bard at New Jersey’s Caldwell College Lifelong Learning Institute, takes his cue from pertinent Shakespearean quotations, describing his journeys to the Bodleian and Folger Shakespeare libraries, relating his exchanges with students and offering a fair amount of hardcore literary, critical and historical analysis of the Bard’s works and influences.

Along the way, he discusses such personal matters as his father’s death from prostate cancer, his mother’s lobotomy and his high regard for his wife, Barbara. He also takes an apparently long-overdue retaliatory swipe at the late actor Lee Strasberg by relating an incident in which Gollob the editor told potential author Strasberg that no one would ever want to read a book as pedantic as the one Strasberg was proposing. It would seem that Strasberg was not as encouraging of Gollob’s early attempts to be an actor as Gollob would have liked.

Bob Smith is a man of fewer pretensions than Gollob, and his new memoir Hamlet’s Dresser shows it.”I’ve seen my ordinary name as a promise to be unseen, unheard, unnoticed,” writes Smith. “And for most of my life I’ve honored the contract.” The title of the memoir derives from Smith’s career as wardrobe man at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut, where he rubbed elbows with well-known personalities, including John Houseman, Jessica Tandy and Katharine Hepburn. Nowadays, Smith takes pride in running informal seminars on Shakespeare at senior centers in New York City. With distant parents and a severely retarded sister, Smith turned to the Bard at an early age and found solace in his poetry and his universal, all-encompassing understanding of human frailty. “I think that the more confused you are inside,” Smith says, “the more you need to trust a thing outside of yourself. I was desperate to lean against a thing bigger than me, and it was clear that William Shakespeare understood what it’s like to ache and not know why.” Smith’s young life was tinged with sadness due to his mother’s depression and alcoholism, his father’s aloofness and the love and pain associated with his sister Carolyn, who was eventually institutionalized. His further exposure to Shakespeare through his theatrical work has made Smith a nonacademic expert on the Bard, with an amazing power to recall lengthy passages of dialogue. His book, too, is laced with illuminating quotes from the Bard’s plays, which shed additional connecting light on the painful details of Smith’s upbringing and ongoing personal hardships, including the tragic suicide of an actor-friend. If the growing soul is best watered by tears of adversity, then Smith is a living example of that axiom. Fortunately, he has turned sorrow into a creative outlet for informing and inspiring his weekly audience of aging men and women, who too are learning of Shakespeare’s curative and comforting powers. Martin Brady writes from Nashville.

Oxymoronica is an addictive little book of paradoxical sayings presented by a lover of the English language who has amassed thousands of them. Dr. Mardy Grothe coined the term “oxymoronica” to suggest not just a contradiction of terms, but a contradiction of ideas.

“You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.” Beneath this sweet self-deprecation of Dolly Parton lies a pointed observation about popular images. From a different corner of musical culture comes this remark on Mozart’s sonatas: “they are too easy for children, and too difficult for adults.” The author ranges across every conceivable region of human affairs, for willful self-contradiction abounds in them all. There’s even a final chapter of “inadvertent” paradoxes, where President Bush plays a central role: “People say I’m indecisive, but I don’t know about that.” Many of the sayings take some time to sort out, like any good puzzle. “I find nothing more depressing than optimism.” “To oppose something is to maintain it.” Then there are the ones that had better not be true, however witty they may be: “I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices one so.”