What is the meaning of the ‘s in father's book? Why?

There are several common ways of showing possession

in English. The most common one is through use of

the apostrophe ('):

Make most singular nouns possessive

by adding 's:

John's car

the boy's room

my friend's father

my neighbor's car

45 Why do we say the handle of the door? ("of phrase”)

Many writers consider it bad form to use apostrophe -s possessives with pieces of furniture and buildings or inanimate objects in general. Instead of "the desk's edge" (according to many authorities), we should write "the edge of the desk" and instead of "the hotel's windows" we should write "the windows of the hotel." In fact, we would probably avoid the possessive altogether and use the noun as an attributive: "the hotel windows." This rule (if, in fact, it is one) is no longer universally endorsed. We would not say "the radio of that car" instead of "that car's radio" (or the "car radio") and we would not write "the desire of my heart" instead of "my heart's desire." Writing "the edge of the ski" would probably be an improvement over "the ski's edge," however.

For expressions of time and measurement, the possessive is shown with an apostrophe -s: "one dollar's worth," "two dollars' worth," "a hard day's night," "two years' experience," "an evening's entertainment," and "two weeks' notice" (the title of the Hollywood movie nothwithstanding).

46. Why do we say the mother's dress, but not the dress of the mother?
The possessive 's comes from the masculine genitive case ending on -es in Old English. This means that you could say "of [the] man" by simply sticking -es after "man". The genitive case was often used to indicate the possessor of something. In German, the genitive case is still used, and it ends on -(e)s for masculine and neuter singular words: the man = der Mann; the man's house = des Mannes Haus. As you see, the genitive is also used with articles. The s in which most possessive pronouns end comes from the same genitive ending, either directly or indirectly by analogy. The genitives his, whos and yours (plural) already existed in Middle English.1 It is conceivable that modern hers, for example, which was something like her in Middle English, was formed by analogy with the possessive pronoun his, or by simply attaching the possessive s to it, if that already functioned as a productive suffix. Note that the apostrophe is of later date than the possessive s: the possessive of summer was simply summers in the time of Shakespeare. Possessives, as well as their synonymous constructions with of, express a range of relationships that are not limited strictly to possession in the sense of ownership.

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