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Books are surprisingly venerated even in our irreverent times. You know how they say the book was better than the movie. That’s been around for a while and that’s probably because it is mostly true.

What, though, is a book? A bound object made of pages? Does the physicality of a book make it so, or can the Kindle and ebooks make that notion an anachronism?

Questions for another video perhaps. The Ted-ed animated video above looks instead at the history and evolution of books as we have come to know them – the complex process of binding, printing, fonts, ink, book covers and also how spines went from being straight to curved.

Created by educator Julie Dreyfuss and animator Patrick Smith, it ends by asking, “As the book evolves and we replace bound texts with flat screens and electronic ink, are these objects and files really books? Does the feel of the cover or the smell of the paper add something crucial to the experience, or does the magic live only within the words, no matter what their presentation?”

The jury is out on that, but a real book can be a powerful tool. Watch the infamous hydraulic press try destroy a book and get schooled in the process. It was among the most dangerous objects that was crushed on this Youtube channel.

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