"One should not be pessimistic about the future of the book. The book, himself, is a gesture of optimism, a gesture of trust in the willingness of men to tell each other, to tell what one has seen and discovered. And at the same time a gesture of trust in the desire to listen, willing to forget oneself for the pleasure of empathizing, of becoming others. The book is an exchange of the best we have and receive. The book is a gift."
This is how Gian Arturo Ferrari closes this unclassifiable book of his. Storia editoriale, an erudite essay that originates from the dawn of writing by traversing the glorious revolution of print typography, first, and industrial publishing, later, to finally come to question the very fate of the book "form," threatened as it is not only in its body-held at gunpoint by its digital incarnation-but also in its destiny as a privileged vehicle of knowledge and understanding by other replicants capable on the surface of knowing how to entertain us, perhaps better, in front of a screen.
So what? All that remains is to read captivated by this short story, which contains many more, certain - at the end of the journey - to discover that the book has been and still is the most complex form of textuality that man has ever known, and that thanks to its office, we can continue to investigate, research, discern and, in the end, understand, know, preserve and save.