Paper : paging through history / Mark Kurlansky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kurlansky, Mark, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Papermaking--History.

Papermaking.

History.

Paper industry--History.

Paper industry.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xx, 389 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2016]

Summary:

Through tracing paper's evolution, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology's influence, affirming that paper is here to stay.

Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. One has only to look at history's greatest press run, which produced 6.5 billion copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao (which doesn't include editions in 37 foreign languages and in braille) to appreciate the range and influence of a single publication, in paper. Or take the fact that one of history's most revered artists, Leonardo da Vinci, left behind only 15 paintings but 4,000 works on paper. And though the colonies were at the time calling for a boycott of all British goods, the one exception they made speaks to the essentiality of the material; they penned the Declaration of Independence on British paper. Now, amid discussion of "going paperless"--and as speculation about the effects of a digitally dependent society grows rampant--we've come to a world-historic juncture. Thousands of years ago, Socrates and Plato warned that written language would be the end of "true knowledge," replacing the need to exercise memory and think through complex questions. Similar arguments were made about the switch from handwritten to printed books, and today about the role of computer technology. By tracing paper's evolution from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the contributions made in Asia and the Middle East, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology's influence, affirming that paper is here to stay.--Adapted from dust jacket.

Contents:

Prologue: The technological fallacy

Being human

The moths that circle a Chinese candle

The Islamic birth of literacy

And where is Xátiva?

Europe between two felts

Making words soar

The art of printing

Out from Mainz

Tenochtitlán and the blue-eyed devil

The trumpet call

Rembrandt's discovery

The traitorous corruption of England

Papering independence

Diderot's promise

Invitation from a wasp

Advantages in the head

To die like gentlemen

Return to Asia

Epilogue: change

Appendix: Timeline.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [347]-354) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780393239614

0393239616

OCLC:

933727269