I’m a sucker for projects like this, even though I would have to rob a bank to buy a copy and then move into a bigger apartment to house that copy. In March (in the U.S.), Oxford University Press is publishing The Oxford Companion to the Book:

The two-volume set . . . holds 51 extended essays and 5,160 A–Z entries written by nearly 400 scholars from around the world. Subjects covered by the book include the history of printing, editorial theory and practice, textual criticism, book collecting, libraries, the history of the book, and the electronic book. It also considers the book “around the world.”

It only took “an editorial team of 30 seven years to produce.” It retails for a neat $275.