The Book Prize Index

A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

Nicholas Basbanes

The passion to possess books has never been more widespread than it is today; indeed, obsessive book collecting remains the only hobby to have a disease named after it. A Gentle Madness is an adventure among the afflicted. Author Nicholas Basbanes, a dedicated bibliophile himself, begins his book 2,200 years ago in Alexandria, when a commitment was made to gather all the world's knowledge beneath one roof. In a series of lively chapters, the continuum then passes through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the twentieth century with a special emphasis on book lore and book culture in Great Britain and North America. In the second half of A Gentle Madness, Basbanes offers a gallery of revealing profiles of living collectors and presents exclusive examinations of the great contemporary stories. The book also includes the most comprehensive bibliography on book collecting compiled in more than a quarter century.

Society & CultureSociety & Culture · medium confidenceSociety & Culture81 signalsLlm Classifier: Society & Culture -> Society & CultureTopic Classifier: Literary Biography -> BiographyKeyword Classifier: Medicine & Public Health -> Medicine & Public HealthLiterary BiographyLiterature & Writers

Award History

0 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionMajor1995FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Alexandria55%
    • Great Britain40%
    • North America38%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    Book collecting is portrayed as a widespread, disease-like obsession with a long historical continuum, and the book’s focus is to trace that passion through regions such as Great Britain and North America.

    Model confidence 46%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 66%.