In this day and age, the publication of printed books is gradually pushed into a vulnerable corner ever closer to nostalgia, and a certain awareness of that process alone should be a reason to welcome the appearance of a real book. They still appear, printed books, and hopefully they will continue to do so. For the time being, they are still very welcome, and the exterior of each of them—hard cover, dust jacket, material appearance—should deserve every reader's attention. John G. Butcher and R. E. Elson's Sovereignty and the Sea deserves that attention to the full: it looks like the perfect book with its hard black cover, solid binding, and effective dust jacket: clear black characters over a sketchy map of Indonesia, pictured in brown lines on an even colored yellow-brown background, a brown-colored spine with white colored letters; a synopsis of short story length on the back cover, the...

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