The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book’s Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey

Davis (Mona Lisa in Camelot) follows a single copy of the Gutenberg Bible through a series of different book collectors and institutions in this enjoyable but unsatisfying history. After a brief account of the Bible’s creation sometime around 1456 by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, Davis skips ahead to 1836, when the 3rd Earl of Gosford, a shy and scholarly Irish aristocrat, acquired Gutenberg Bible Number 45. Later owners included a “lord, a sauce tycoon, a papal countess, and a nuclear physicist.” Davis places the primary focus on Estelle Doheny, oil tycoon Edward Doheny’s widow. One of the only female American book collectors of the early 20th century, Estelle secured the book in 1950 after a four-decade-long search. In addition to character sketches, Davis also traces changes in the study of books, from in-person inspection via magnifying glasses, to chemical analysis using a cyclotron’s proton beam, then software comparisons of digitized editions. Despite these intriguing facts and characters, Davis’s overall thesis—that “each owner and his or her circle left a mark” on the book—doesn’t leave the reader with any meaningful insights by the end of her book. [em]Agent: Betsy Amster, Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises. (Mar.) [/em]