Figure 1. Stanley (left) and collective member Bruce Robbins, book party for Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (1988; edited by Andrew Ross), 1989. Photograph by Anders Stephanson. More

Figure 4 Oppose Book Worship is the text in which Mao famously decrees, “No investigation, No right to speak.” Although Mao does not anticipate the possibility that book worship might itself constitute a form of investigation, it is arguably the methodology of this article. Photograph courtesy More

Figure 5 A twenty-first-century publishing boom: books about the end of books. Photograph courtesy of the author More

Figure 7 Books in bulk at Costco. Photograph courtesy of the author More

Figure 6 The streets of the modern city are full of discarded books. Photograph courtesy of the author More

Figure 8 Red books “curated” by a seller on fab.com. Screenshot courtesy of the author More

Figure 3 A textbook shaped like the state of Texas. See Isensee, “Texas Hits the Books.” Image: LA Johnson/NPR More