＂An interior look at Roberto Calasso’s work as a publisher and his reflections on the art of book publishing In this fascinating memoir, the author and publisher Roberto Calasso meditates on
the art of book publishing. Recalling the beginnings of Adelphi in the 1960s, he touches on the Italian house’s defining qualities, including the considerations involved in designing the
successful Biblioteca series and the strategy for publishing a wide range of authors of high literary quality, as well as the historic critical edition of the works of Nietzsche. With his
signature erudition and polemical flair, Calasso transcends Adelphi to look at the publishing industry as a whole, from the essential importance of graphics, jackets, and cover flaps to the
consequences of universal digitization. And he outlines what he describes as the ＂most hazardous and ambitious＂ profile of what a publishing house can be: a book comprising many books, a form
in which ＂all the books published by a certain publisher could be seen as links in a single chain＂--a conception akin to that of other twentieth-century publishers, from Giulio Einaudi to Roger
Straus, of whom the book offers brief portraits. An essential book for writers, readers, and editors, The Art of the Publisher isa tribute to the elusive yet profoundly relevant art of making
books＂--
