Beauty and the Book is a cultural history of the craze for fine books which began after WWI and ended with the Depression. Benton begins by describing the massive public demand for fine editions, and the anxieties about class, literacy and culture which this craze reflected. She goes on to tell the stories of a range of publishers (from Bennet Cerf at Random House to owners of small, private presses) who catered to this demand by producing absurdly expensive editions, whose prices were justified both by the materials used (vellum, gold leaf, etc.) and the labor intensive processes by which they were created. Ostensibly, these limited editions were an antidote to the rise of mass literacy, and the consequent decline in literary taste. Unlike cheap romances and magazines, these limited editions (usually of classic works) embodied a pre-industrial ideal of "high" culture. Using fine editions as a jumping off point, Benton highlights the many aspirations and investments that swirl around book reading and book buying. Particularly at time in which the book as physical object is being challenged by new technologies, Beauty and the Book describes an extreme version of the materialistic concerns and attachments that are always one aspect of book buying and reading.