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An Odyssey in Print: Adventures in the Smithsonian Libraries by Mary Augusta Thomas, Smithsonian Institution Press, £22.95/$29.95, ISBN 1588340368

IN Honoré de Balzac’s The Fatal Skin the hero wanders into a second-hand shop and nearly swoons at the richness and oddity of the objects that surround him. If An Odyssey in Print is anything to go by, the same would happen to any lucky book lover left to delve into the Smithsonian Institution’s 1.5 million-strong collection of printed artefacts.

This illustrated peek at the treasure house of the Smithsonian’s 23 libraries shows that they hold a lot more than just a load of old journals. There is James Cook’s original description of his Endeavour voyage, a Buck Rodgers pop-up book, 15th-century maps of the world, jazz-age posters, illustrated textbooks of ichthyology, 19th-century sheet music, lithographs of shells, and a child’s book in German about the joys of flying across the Atlantic by Zeppelin. Choosing what to include must have been a nerve-racking job.

A thoughtful text covers the history of the Smithsonian (founded on a bequest from a British Lord’s bastard who never visited the US) and its library. The book has a good bibliophilic revel in the cornucopia of print deposited in the library collections of America’s attic. It is beautifully produced, and the examples splendidly chosen. If only they could have captured that wonderful old book smell …