AN OPEN LETTER TO PENGUIN BOOKS….I can’t imagine anyone else cares about this, but after browsing through all the comments in my post about one-volume histories of the United States, I decided that the most highly recommended titles (aside from those by the socialist and the cartoonist) were Hugh Brogan’s Penguin History of the United States of America and Eric Foner’s Story of American Freedom. Foner’s book seemed too brief even for an overview, so I decided to buy Brogan’s book and see what it was like.
But I didn’t. My local bookstore had a copy, but when I opened it up I discovered that the production gurus at Penguin Books had apparently decided to save on paper by setting the entire book in (I’m guessing here) 9 point type. Seriously tiny stuff. Despite my advancing age I have excellent near eyesight, but even so I finally decided that reading a whole book set in type this small would be too painful. So I put it back.
Thus this plea to Penguin Books: how about producing a version of this book set in the same size type everyone else uses for paperback books? Normal line lengths would be nice too. Thanks.
