Beyond Judging Books by Their Covers: "Reflections on Interrogating Cultural Anthropology Text Covers"

Why place covers on books? The most obvious reason is to protect the pages. But what do you put on the covers themselves? Answers to the “what” question have evolved over the nearly two millennia since the birth of the codex. To situate the use—and user interpretation—of contemporary covers, particularly for textbooks, let’s start with some history.1