Paper

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 Máo zhuxí yulù, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Zedong)-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. Paper will be the commodity history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century and illuminates our times.

Long-listed for ALA Carnegie Medal 2017

“"This extraordinary book will prove invaluable for therapists of all persuasions. Marks-Tarlow successfully offers the reader an accessible exposition of a complex topic while preserving its mystery, emphasizing the bottom-up, right-brain nature of clinical intuition and elucidating how the therapist's embodied experience is the basis for choices made in therapy."”

"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
"Kurlansky’s book is published with a deckle edge finish, a process that replaces the regular clean-cut trim of a page with a jagged, pulped roughness... It is a beautiful thing to hold and feel, and it presents a fine argument for the retention of paper as an aesthetically lusty object, let alone one that’s thrived through centuries of change." -- The Observer
"Kurlansky expertly argues a case for its [paper's] continuing survival." -- The Scotsman
"Kurlansky... explains how something so simple came to play such a vital part in history." -- The Sunday Business Post
"Paper is not what you would call a learned book, but one learns an awful lot from it, all packaged in Kurlansky’s whipsmart prose." -- The Times

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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