There's something new going on at Amazon, and it's pretty amazing. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. About 15 years ago, well before there was a world wide web, I wrote a longish piece that ended up as the introduction to an 11-volume Datapro series on workgroup computing. Part of my rambling and speculative thumbsucker described how various structural parts of a book are analogous to hyperlinks: the table of contents links to chapters; index entries link to pages where those terms appear; superscripted numbers in the text link to footnotes; books cited in the text and footnotes link to the bibliography.

It's that last one that Amazon has just implemented. Quietly, it seems. At least I hadn't seen anything about it. But when I noticed it for the first time last night, it truly blew me away. How about an example, Chris? OK. For example, the Art in Theory series (there are three volumes) is fantastic -- a history of art in documents that defined, described and shaped various schools and movements from 1648 to the 21st century. I'm hot on the trail of Clement Greenberg and aestheticism at the moment.

But that's not the amazing part. Click through to Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. When you get there, page down a bit till you see this:

This book cites 132 books:

• Art in Theory: 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas by Charles Harrison on 6 pages
• Art and Social Life by G. Plekhanov on 5 pages
• Three American painters, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella: Fogg Art Museum, 21 April-30 May 1965 by Michael Fried on 5 pages
• Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews by Michael Fried on 5 pages

See all 132 books this book cites

The book titles link to the main book pages, as you'd suspect, but the "on X pages" links go to individual sublinks on that last big list ("See all 132 books this book cites"), and those sublinks go to specifically referenced pages inside the books cited. As Madame Levy might say: Mon Dieu!

And that's not all you'll get! If you call now, you'll also get this handsome set of Ginsu Steak Knives!

No, wait. That's my other blog. Start again...

You'll also get, in some cases -- in this case for The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America by Sacvan Bercovitch -- something that looks like this.

70 books that cite this book:

• West of Emerson: The Design of Manifest Destiny by Kris Fresonke on 4 pages
• In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 by David Waldstreicher on 4 pages
• Ruthless Democracy by Timothy B. Powell on 4 pages
• Ruthless Democracy by Timothy B. Powell on 4 pages

See all 70 books citing this book

The implications of this new feature are just short of mind boggling (hard to tell from this end, as my mind boggled long ago). All joking aside, it will revolutionize serious research and scholarship. Which of course is why it's got RageBoy® so turned on. Why, just look at how excited he is!