It wasn’t until I got a close look at a straight-8 Duesenberg (just as it sounds, that designation refers to an engine with eight cylinders straight in a row, rather than the far more common V-8 configuration) that I fully understood how the love affair with the automobile began. First sold in 1921 decades before anyone uttered the phrase “carbon footprint,” the long, elegant Duesenberg became the favored vehicle of movie stars, royalty and well-heeled cartoon characters: Daddy Warbucks owned one. They were simply glorious cars — huge, gorgeous, fast, brilliantly engineered and flawless in every detail. I remember standing beside that automobile and trying to imagine what it must have been like for a kid from the 1920s, who’d previously seen only jalopies, tractors and hay wagons, when a gleaming Duesenberg stopped in town. Words like passion, lust and awe came to mind.

What, you’re wondering, does this have to do with books or literature? I’m getting there. Today, lavish art books notwithstanding, we revere books for the ideas and emotions they convey, the stories they offer, and the authors’ style of writing. The printing and binding of most mass produced books are well done but not artful. But the earliest books were also extraordinary objects — rare, expensive and closely watched over. Many were works of art. The “Luttrell Psalter,” for example, is an exquisite illuminated manuscript made by five artists and a single scribe some time in the early 1300s. Another, the “Lindisfarne Gospels,” one of the most beautiful, intricately decorated manuscripts ever made, was created by a monk named Eadfrith in the late seventh century. Both are now owned by the British Library.

And then there’s “printed book No.1,” or as the Library describes the “Diamond Sutra,” the “world’s earliest, dated, printed book,” published in 868 and, according to its colophon, “reverently made for universal distribution.” In fact, it’s not a bound book; it’s a scroll prepared from seven panels of paper. But who’s quibbling? The printing was done with carved wooden blocks, and it’s a wonder to behold this 1140-year-old publication, found in 1900 in near-perfect condition. Imagine if you could handle it. Well, you almost can.

One of the luxuries of the digitization of the great museum and library print collections is that we mortals can now closely examine many of the rarest books and manuscripts in the world as if we were holding them in our hands. The ones mentioned here, for example, are now only as far away as your computer screen, thanks to new Web-based software called, Turning the Pages, introduced in 2004 by the British Library along with the software developer Armadillo Systems.

If you have any doubts about how humanity became enchanted with the book as object, take a few minutes to tour the Turning the Pages showcase on the British Library Web site. Check out Mercator’s “First Atlas of Europe,” produced in the 1570s; the richly illustrated “Golden Haggadah,” created in 1320; or the portly ("over three stone” and measuring 536 by 380 mm) and grand “Sherborne Missal,” “the largest most lavishly decorated late medieval service book to have survived the Reformation intact.” These and other rarities appear along with well-researched explanatory text, audio and a magnifier that slides over the pages with the same ease and function as the old-fashioned glass one you keep in your desk drawer. And while you’re there, don’t miss the original version of “Alice in Wonderland,” (titled “Alice’s Adventures under Ground") — handwritten and illustrated by Lewis Carroll as a gift for his young muse, Alice Liddell — and Jane Austen’s parody, “The History of England,” handwritten by the author at the age of 15 and illustrated by her older sister, Cassandra.

The only way to improve on the Turning the Pages experience would be if you could use it while cruising in a straight-8 Duesenberg across the Great Plains on an August evening, which is, of course, possible, though not likely.