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This article examines how digital methodologies expand the capabilities of book history scholarship through a case study of the Women's Print History Project. The WPHP is a database of thousands of bibliographical records about printed books linked to records about the persons and business firms that created them. Using what we call "radical descriptivism" tempered with "radical skepticism," we explore how traces of women's labor exist in plain sight and how books can obscure and reveal gendered norms. We conclude that incorporating gender studies and digital methodologies into the history of print moves us closer to the capacious potential of the sociology of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two recent monographs address distinct but interrelated aspects of China's modern publishing industry. The interplay between intellectuals and the state, the transformation of the publishing industry via foreign knowledge, and the modification of Chinese social, cultural, and legal practices by evolving approaches to the production and distribution of knowledge are among the themes of modern Chinese history common to both studies. Researchers of book culture, publishing and printing history, cultural history, the history of media and popular culture, or intellectual history will find these books valuable. This essay discusses the following works. Robert Culp. The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 371 pp. $65.00 (cloth). | Fei-Hsien Wang. Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China. Histories of Economic Life Series. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. 350 pp. $39.95 (cloth). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]