We've seen the film Helvetica, read the Comic Sans jokes and heard the Vampire Weekend song that pays homage to Futura. Do we really need another lesson in the world's growing obsession with fonts? My answer, having read this thorough history of the printed word, is yes. After being walked through stories of font revolutionaries, from the money-motivated Johannes Gutenberg to the sexual libertarian Eric Gill, it's difficult to even look at a cereal packet in the same way again.

Ranging from the earliest handwriting-inspired printed letters to the birth of such big-hitters as Helvetica, Baskerville and Obama's campaign favourite Gotham, Just My Type is comprehensive enough to interest experts, with enough personal stories to hook the rest of us. The "seismic shift" caused by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, after a college calligraphy course inspired him to install an unprecedented range of typefaces on the first Mac, is one such tale; another follows the Face designer Neville Brody and his typographical rule-breaking in the 1980s, designed to keep alive "a language of protest".

The Guardian's switch to its own self-titled font in 2005 is given a mention, as is the controversy sparked by Ikea ditching its elegant Futura for the wider, squatter Verdana in 2009. This is one of the joys of the book: every library, chain store and cinema trip becomes an opportunity for assessing letter design.

That typeface used for any movie branded "epic" (especially if it stars Russell Crowe)? That's Trajan. Jurassic Park and The Lion King share the same "tribal" Neuland Inline font. And Cooper Black is what easyJet has in common with the Beach Boys. All the above fonts are condemned by Garfield, though none so much as the London 2012 Olympics font, which tops his list of all-time worst offenders.

This book won't just turn readers into avid font-spotters; it will also nudge them towards admiring the beauty of a single letter or a well-drawn ampersand. Garfield's reverence for good design, couched in clear, often lyrical prose, is infectious, and sometimes he writes as though the letters themselves were living things.

A set of disintegrating typeface thrown into the Thames a century ago is described as "resisting both dredging and the digital age, perhaps occasionally breaking free to form its own words and sentences as fortune and the molten tide allows". In an era when the printed word reigns supreme, it's reassuring to believe that fonts can have soul.