Die Entwicklung der modernen Buchkunst in Deutschland
The pattern
This still is filed under Craft-argument book.
Define
A book or manual that sells a method by arguing it. Chapters as proof, not as decoration around a product.
Mechanism
Authority by treatise. The reader who accepts the argument has already accepted the seller as teacher.
Verdict
We can teach a craft in public and the teaching is the funnel.
Why it works
The preface opens by naming the two objections a reader would already have - that it is too early to write this history, and that the book will feed an overvaluation of book decoration - and answers them by promising the book itself as the rebuttal. That buys the right to be enthusiastic later. The persuasion then runs through the plates rather than the prose: captioning every facsimile with artist, publisher and year turns opinion into a checkable record, and ordering the plates chronologically lets the reader watch the improvement happen instead of being told about it. The author also admits outright that the book is a Werbeschrift for good book design, which disarms the charge of being one.
Steal this when
You are arguing that a field has changed and you have the artefacts to show it - put the evidence in dated order, caption each piece with its source, and let the sequence make the argument while the prose only interprets.