The article is a review of L’italiano e il libro. Il mondo fra le righe, a book warmly recommended to university students, particularly those studying humanities, for its depth and readability. 

Linguists and philologists deal with topics that are typical of their colleagues in the bibliography and library science fields, showing that the boundaries between disciplines are more conventional than real and that we share a common ground, because our philological and historical roots, and also our interest in the dissemination of writing and in the promotion of reading and information literacy, are common. 

The book contains 19 essays written by 20 authors, divided into four sections: “Learning the language”; “Cornerstones and turning points” (analysing the tools for transmitting and preserving recorded knowledge); “The richness of writing”; “The libraries of the greats” (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Leonardo, Pietro Bembo, Manzoni).