by the book

“The following year I added a program inspired by the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.”

Simon & Schuster: The Grace to Race

“I knew George the Fourth's physician, Sir William Knighton, who had been mine before I was imprisoned (it was not he who was the royal agent alluded to); and, if my memory does not deceive me, Sir William told me that George had been gratified by the book above mentioned.”

Selected English Letters

“There were officially twenty drill movements for the loading and firing of a musket; five of them alone applied to how the steel ramrod should be used to thrust ball and charge down the barrel, and the Battalion’s insistence on doing it by the book meant that Sharpe had timed their two demonstration shots at more than thirty seconds each.”

Sharpe's Eagle

“Nothing is more striking to me than the impression of bitterness and cynical ill-nature produced by the book upon all who did not know the author.”

Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters

“A major example is James Thomson's ex - traordinarily popular The Seasons (1730-46) in which the divine analogy of “God” offered by the book of”

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

“We want this one by the book so we can nail this son of a bitch’s hide to the wall.”

Shiver