Even geezers get it. Books are history — and not just history books, but history. E.L. Doctorow and ex-longtime Random House editor Jason Epstein are huckstering the Espresso Book Machine this week.

The author and editor, buddies from the print days, gathered at Harvard Book Store for the book machine's formal debut. It prints, binds, and trims a book at the goddamn bookstore — on demand, like ordering a Big Mac.

This is shaping up as a momentous week in the tech/money universe: Google's Wave is finally rolling, and now the book readers get a formal unveiling of a cool tool.

(If the book machine means that, eventually, I could quickly get a copy of the latest Fred Vargas or David Liss or Boris Akunin instead of not finding it on store shelves, that's great!)

See this LA Times story focusing on Doctorow and this WSJ story focusing on Epstein.

At 81, Epstein's almost as old as Ned Ludd, but he's far from Ned. ""We've come to the end of the Age of Gutenberg," he told the Cambridge crowd.

Epstein's own On Demand Books makes the book machine, and he calls it (and the whole new era of e-books) the revenge of the slush pile. Because you can publish your own book and even print it. Actually, it will be bookstores that will publish the books, instead of having publishers ship out books to the stores.

That is, if you even want a printed copy. And you will for now, but only until e-readers like the Kindle get better.