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Jarvis (recently retired director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, CUNY) has extensive experience in journalism and media studies as a practitioner, scholar, and instructor, and he has published several critically recognized works. In this clear, convincing, well-documented book he presents his sense of his own place in experiencing the developments occurring in print and digital media. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first section Jarvis introduces the "Gutenberg parenthesis," a term coined by Danish scholar L. O. Sauerber in the mid-1990s, which is defined as the 500-year period between the invention of the printing press and the rise of the internet. In section 2, "Inside the Parenthesis," Jarvis provides a survey of the history of printing from Gutenberg to the present, deftly using the work of scholars influential in what was once termed the "new" history of the book. And in the third section, "Leaving the Parenthesis," he examines the decline of print culture and the appearance and impact on society of the internet, the smartphone, and social media. In an afterword titled "And What of the Book," Jarvis reflects on the lessons learned from the Gutenberg parenthesis. A valuable addition to the literature on the history of the book and the internet.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.