I’m relatively conscientious about referencing sources when I write in an academic style (or even when I blog)! I was in the middle of writing a paper where I cite How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand, and found that the entry on Amazon doesn’t include an image of the front matter that describes where the book was published.
So I went down into my basement for my paperback version of the book, and which gave me the following geographic information:
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd.
Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New ZealandPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, EnglandFirst published in the United States of America by
Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994
Published in Penguin Books 1995.
A little further down, it reads …
Printed in the United States of America
… so I must have bought this copy in the United States.
I suppose that the “correct” citation is New York:Viking Penguin, but that’s really following rules that don’t make sense in a “world is flat” context. As a matter a fact, it makes about as much sense as sending a letter (i.e. snail mail) to Stewart Brand with a street address, when he lives on a tugboat moored at the Sausolito harbour.
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[...] A basic concept in systems thinking is that, in a complex system, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Looking at the parts of a system won’t help to understand the whole. It’s like looking at hydrogen and oxygen to describe water. (Thanks for reminding me, David Ing!) [...]