Most of what we say about books is really about the words inside them: the rosy nostalgic glow for childhood reading; the lifetime companionship of a much-loved novel. But books are things as well as words; objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines; loosen their leaves and write in their margins; so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are; as Stephen King put it; 'a uniquely portable magic'. Here; Emma Smith shows us why. Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands; exploring when; why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millennium's worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small; Smith reveals that; as much as their contents; it is books' physical form - their 'bookhood' - that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Cooper's Riders; to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese; this composite artisanal object has; for centuries; embodied and extended relationships between readers; nations; ideologies and cultures; in significant and unpredictable ways. Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books; Portable Magic hails the rise of the mass-market paperback; and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg; it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers; and proposes new definitions of a 'classic'-and even of the book itself. Ultimately; it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal - and more turbulent - than we tend to imagine.