Toward an Environmental History of the Book: The Nature of Hubert Howe Bancroft's Works

Every historian of early California is familiar with the thirty-ninevolume The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. This article takes us beyond its author(s) to the commodity chain the books represent: from their financing, labor, printing, promotion—all the way to the glue in their bindings, creating the first known environmental history of a book.