Awards

• Long-listed for ALA Carnegie Medal 2017

Overview

"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 created civilisations, fostering the fomenting of revolutions and the stabilising of regimes. History's greatest press run produced 6.5 billion copies of M?o zhu x? yu lu, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) and Leonardo da Vinci left behind only 15 paintings but 4,000 works on paper. Now, on the cusp of ""going paperless""—and amid speculation about the effects of a digitally dependent society—we've come to a world-historic juncture to examine what paper means to civilisation.Through tracing paper's evolution, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology's influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper will be the history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century."

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9780393239614

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Reviews

Curious, vital, prolific, and witty . Kurlansky s work makes brilliant use of paper as a key to civilization.

Illuminating....Kurlansky is a graceful writer and an industrious researcher.

The history of paper is a history of cultural transmission, and Kurlansky tells it vividly in this compact, well-illustrated book. -- The New York Times

Author Information

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-eight books and a former foreign correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He lives in New York City.

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