The history of the book in large part follows or illustrates the history of (at least european) civilization since the renaissance in many ways. Law, knowledge, travel, conquest, books were all part of that, along with dev of technology that made book printing ever cheaper.
this is actually about the codex. books have been around for much longer.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex</a>