This book is more than a typographic style guide. It is also a history of typographic usage and a brief encyclopedia of typographic concepts, resources and traditions. In short, it is a lucid and authoritative desktop reference for everyone who works with written word.

A new collection from one of Canada’s finest contemporary poets. In The Ridge, Robert Bringhurst offers a work of nonfiction in poetic form, intensely focused on the ecological past, present and future of the West Coast of Canada. At the book’s heart is a long poem, “The Ridge,” in which Bringhurst makes meticulous use of scientific language and, with a poet’s perspective and precision, translates abstract concepts into tangible and devastating imagery. Global energy consumption is measured in cords of wood instead of BTUs or megawatts; subatomic particles demarcating time and space are prayer flags tearing free in the slow destruction of the solar system. In dazzling prose that weaves together the physical and the metaphysical, Bringhurst shifts his attention from tiny spores to fish farms, the spirit world, telescopes and epistemology. Beautiful, profound and insightful, The Ridge reflects the author’s reputation as one of Canada’s most esteemed poets.

This work makes plain the evolution, impact and development of the printed word as we know it. Covering the earliest forms of the letters of the alphabet, to graphic technology today, this revised edition should appeal to designers, students and typophiles.

This new edition of a collaboration between one of the finest living artists in North America and one of Canada's finest poets includes a new introduction by the distinguished anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Ten masterful, complex drawings by Bill Reid and ten tales demonstrate the richness and range of Haida mythology, from bawdy yet profound tales of the trickster Raven to poignant, imagistic narratives of love and its complications in a world where animals speak, dreams come real, and demigods, monsters, and men live side by side.

"Robert Bringhurst may well be the poet we have all been waiting for, one who can reclaim for poetry the dignity, wit, brilliance, and wisdom it has recently appeared to have mislaid. He is without doubt a major poet, not only in the context of Canadian letters, but in that of all writing of our time."—Poetry Inspired by Eastern, pre-Socratic, and Native American art and ideas, Robert Bringhurst's Selected Poems gathers work from fifteen volumes and embodies music, ecology, mythology, and philosophy. As he writes, "When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens." Bringhurst's passion for books and words extends to the design and typography of this gorgeous volume. "Essay on Adam" There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell. Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four: he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him. Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam. The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth, fear, we have tried. It is useless. The fifth, nothing happened, is dull. The choices are these: he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between them is only an issue of whether the demons work from the inside out or from the outside in: the one theological question. Robert Bringhurst is a poet, typographer, and linguist, well known for his award-winning translations of Haida storytellers. His manual The Elements of Typographic Style is one of the world's most influential texts on typographic design. He lives on Quadra Island, British Columbia.

Poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst has worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, which have waited until now for the broad recognition they deserve."--BOOK JACKET.

Number one of the CODE(X) Monograph Series. Adapted from The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada, published in fall 2008 by CCSP Press at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. Robert Bringhurst's essay talks about book design and typography, as well as the future of the book. This book was designed and printed in an edition of 500 copies on a Heidelberg cylinder press by Peter Koch, assisted by Jonathan Gerken and Shanna Mahan for the CODEX Foundation. The cover was printed from antique wood and metal types in the Koch collection.

This new edition of a collaboration between one of the finest living artists in North America and one of Canada's finest poets includes a new introduction by the distinguished anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Ten masterful, complex drawings by Bill Reid and ten tales demonstrate the richness and range of Haida mythology, from bawdy yet profound tales of the trickster Raven to poignant, imagistic narratives of love and its complications in a world where animals speak, dreams come real, and demigods, monsters, and men live side by side.