When and how and why did we come up with the idea of an index?

Dennis Duncan will be here to talk about his book, Index, A History of the.

What happens when a violinist recently discovered Stradivarius goes missing?

Brendan Slokum will be here to talk about his debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy.

Plus, my colleagues and I will talk about what we're reading.

This is the Bookerview Podcast from The New York Times.

It's February 26th.

I'm Pamela Paul.

Dennis Duncan joins us now from North London.

His new book is called Index, A History of the.

Dennis, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

I guess British people would say a history of the and some Americans.

That sounds much better, but either way, it is such a brilliant title.

And I need to know, at what point in the process did you come up with it?

Like, did you even just start with that title and say, this should be a book?

Is that such a great title?

Well, it came about halfway through.

The idea actually was that I was going to write an academic book, a dry scholarly book

that would come out with an academic press and be sold primarily to libraries.

But at some point along the way, I published a little bit of journalism about it.

And there was some real interest from trade publishers who said, you know, you could make this into a trade book.

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