Loxley’s book is not a technical manual, but rather, as the title suggests, a popular history of type. Unlike Chappell and Bringhurst’s earlier book, which covers some of the same ground with a similar intention, Type is written like a novel, with the interplay of the great artists and technicians of the world of typography dramatized but never caricatured. Sometimes Loxley tries a little too hard to draw some of the earlier European type designers, filling in the blanks left in the historical record, but overall the reader gets a reasonably complete look at the people & forces that shaped the type design, -founding & -setting industries.