Reading Ireland: Print, Reading and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland Book

(+) The featured designs in the volume were extraordinarily well crafted, and the variation exercises are worth studying for any level or kind of designer.
(-) For one of the consummate books on design, you'd think the type itself would be legible; while I appreciate the struggle in fitting three translations in one page and arranging it artfully around captions, the overall readability greatly suffered due to straining to read the small typeface.
(+) Overall quality of the binding, paper, and printing of the book is excellent, as befitting a classic on design.
(-) The topics of the text was disjointed and vague when a fuller explanation (for example, conceptually connecting the dots between the comments about typography's history) would have better served the reader.
(-/+) While some may prefer and appreciate an academia attitude, the overall tone was needlessly pretentious and cold to a possible layman or beginning designer.