The Golden Thread by Ewan Clayton
TITLE: The Golden Thread: The Story of Writing
AUTHOR: Ewan Clayton
DATE PUBLISHED: 2015
FORMAT: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9781848873636
__________________________
Blurb:
"The Golden Thread is an enthralling and accessible history of the cultural miracle that is the written word. It is an invention that has been used to share ideas in every field of human endeavour, and a motor of cultural, scientific and political progress. From the simple representative shapes used to record transactions of goods and animals in ancient Egypt, tothe sophisticated typographical resources available to the twenty-first-century computer user, the story of writing is the story of human civilization itself."
__________________________
This book is a history of the evolution f western writing, everything from the development of the Roman alphabet from Ancient Mediterranean cultures, the development of different writing styles, the use of different writing implements from reeds to quilles to steel nibbed pens, and the use of different mediums to write on from marble blocks and papyrus to paper and computers. The book includes many other interesting tidbits such as the increase in literacy, the development of the book, record keeping, increased use of writing in corporations, the development of the post-office, the printing press, the novel, graffiti and the computer. While the book was interesting and informative, I found the writing style to be somewhat pedantic.
