Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use - Volume 1
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 plate does the arguing and the prose only points at it. By reproducing the actual printed page at size rather than describing it, the book makes the reader perform the comparison and arrive at the judgement himself, which is why the verdicts land as observation rather than opinion. The captions are a citation system - printer, place, date, holding library - so every aesthetic claim is anchored to an object someone could go and check. And the book is set in the manner it recommends, so the reading experience is continuous evidence for the argument.
Steal this when
Steal this when your authority rests on evidence other people can verify and your reader has been trained by worse material to distrust taste claims. Show the artefact full size, caption it with its provenance, and keep your own commentary short enough that the exhibit stays the hero.