Joel J. Miller is as much a movement as a man. Of everything his new book “The Idea Machine” has to offer, I most appreciate his argument that books not only reflect our humanity, but they also, in dialogue with one another, teach us to be more humane.

Joel J. Miller, The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future (344 pages, Prometheus Books, 2025).

Joel E. Miller is as much a movement as he is a man. A very close friend of mine told me that “I had to follow Miller. He’s amazing.” He had said that to me multiple times over the last several years. For whatever reason, I didn’t listen. Maybe I thought Miller could never live up to the hype. Then, something happened. Miller and I became Facebook friends, we connected on X/Twitter, and, most importantly, I subscribed to his brilliant and wide-ranging substack. As it turns out, though Miller is about eight years younger than I, we have a ton in common: not just our love of books, but also our very view of the world. If anything, my friend was too timid in his praise, and it’s hard for me to imagine a pre-Miller phase in my professional life. No, I don’t exaggerate. Miller is really that cool.

Suffice to say, then, I was thrilled when I found out that Miller’s new book, The Idea Machine, would be coming out in late 2025. The press generously sent me an advanced reader copy as well as the real book prior to its publication. To support Miller, I also ordered a personal copy from Amazon. Unfortunately, events conspired against me, and November and early December were taken up with other writing projects, other books, and finishing the fall semester at Hillsdale. As soon as Christmas break began, however, I dove into The Idea Machine. From the moment I started it, I couldn’t put it down. It completely gripped me.

Miller approaches the writing and the structure of The Idea Machine in a three-fold manner. First, he throws out a tidbit of profound wisdom. Then, second, wrangling an immense amount of historical data, he tells a story. At the end of each story, third, he offers further thoughts, which he calls “Marginalia.” I devoured it all. Indeed, the unique structure of the book proved very inviting and very successful.

Admittedly, a lover of books, a writer of books, and a newly-minted friend of Miller’s, I wanted to admire The Idea Machine even before the review copies arrived. Now that I’ve completed it, I’ve not been disappointed. Quite the contrary. And, I can state again, after reading The Idea Machine, Miller is much a man as a movement.

As already noted, Miller loves creating, embracing, and profound tidbits of wisdom. His subject, the book, is fascinating and, of course, more than worthy of such a treatment. The book is, after all, one of the greatest technological advances in human history. Twice, Miller quotes Barbara Tuchman in the book: “Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.” Though Tuchman wrote this years ago, she might as well have been blurbing The Idea Machine. Her quote is a perfect synopsis of Miller’s thesis.

As Miller convincingly argues, the very art of writing is a distinct form of thinking. This begs the question: Does one compose and then write, or does one compose and write? Miller believes it’s the latter. He also asks the same thing about reading. When we read, how are we interacting with the text? What exactly does the brain do when it encounters new ideas? For Miller, the success of a book is not just what’s on the printed page, but what transfers to the human soul. Miller also brilliantly notes that the way we arrange our books—how we catalogue them, how we hold them in dialogue, one to another—is also critically important. If, for example, I look at my shelves, it’s not outrageous that Seamus Haney’s translation of Beowulf sits next to Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which sits next to Lewis’s The Space Trilogy. Or, another shelf, the Shelburne Essays by Paul Elmer More rest next to the six books that Irving Babbitt wrote. Or, on yet another shelf, that the complete works of Robert E. Howard, reside comfortably next to the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft. The very placement on the shelves puts the books in dialogue with one another. And, a visitor perusing my books comes to learn something about me as well.

As noted above, Miller is also an excellent historian and story teller. In his capable hands, we learn much about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on the virtues of books (or, in the view of Socrates, not). We learn that when St. Augustine was told, “take and read” in the Garden, he was really encountering something sacramental. We learn, somewhat to my surprise, that the Catholic Church did everything possible throughout the Middle Ages to advance literacy and scriptural study. We learn that Petrarch and Erasmus were truly amazing humanists. We learn that Luther, whatever we might think of his theology, understood quite well the relatively recent technological advances of the printing press, and, as such, the power of the book. We learn that Jefferson’s obsession with owning the largest private library in the early American republic radically shaped how we Americans viewed ourselves. And, last but not least, we learn that books allowed radical abolitionist and black nationalist David Walker, culture warrior Frederick Douglas, and novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe not only to extend the principles of liberty and equality from the American founding, but, actually, to fulfill them.

Let me state for a third time, Miller is as much a movement as a man. I’ve come to appreciate him in a variety of ways, and I especially appreciate The Idea Machine. Frankly, every reader of The Imaginative Conservative should have a copy on his shelf. Of everything the book has to offer, I most appreciated Miller’s argument that books not only reflect our humanity, but they also, properly understood, and in dialogue with one another, teach us to be more humane.

The featured image is “Reading” (c. 1865) by Mosè Bianchi, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.