Good book - not flashy but informative and good history

Mr. Kurlansky is a master at making a seemingly dull topic interesting. Because paper is inextricably linked to literacy and the development of written language, he had plenty of tangential topics to cover. If I'm completely honest I tended to get tired of his functional descriptions of how papyrus, parchment, and all the different kinds of paper are made. But that was ok, because I'm always fascinated with the development of writing.

Here are some of my favorite facts from the book:

Human beings have existed for between 3.5 and 5 million years, depending on what stage is recognized as human, but only started writing about 5,000 years ago. This means that humans spent 99.9% of their history without writing.

Historians have multiple theories regarding the origin of writing, the leading one being that it originated as an attempt to improve accounting in business transactions.

The first examples of phoneticism consisted of puns in pictograph form.

Islam, which recognizes Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, taught that Jews and Christians should be respected as ahl al-kitah - "people of the book."

All [Dante's] "writing" was in fact dictated to a scribe, who wrote it down on parchment, which was how all writers wrote until paper was adopted. It is even possible that Dante did not know how to write.

European languages had no word for zero. In fact, most European languages only had words for "one", "two," and "many."

I could go on. But I won't. If your interest is piqued I recommend you go pick up the book.

Yet another one of those "biography of things" books that I adore, written by the guy who can be argued started this whole genre.

In addition to paper, this book is just as much about the evolution of writing, the early book industry (or incunabula, one of my favorite words from library school) and printing in general. I liked the earlier parts of the book that dealt with the topic from a historic view. The later chapters felt a bit unnecessary and seemed somehow separate. Kurlansky seems to have just visited some modern paper mills and people who make paper by hand around the world -- notably Japan and the Basque region in Europe. It's full of statistics and details about industrial age printing equipment. There are plenty of illustrations throughout the book of paper artifacts, but I would have appreciated some illustrations of the paper-making process and associated tools, considering so much of the book was devoted to this topic.

I will note, however that the paper on which this book was printed seemed above average in quality, which was quite pleasing.

Some technologies have a tremendous effect on life… paper is one.

Having read several of Kurlansky's books, in which history is distilled through unusual lenses, I was looking forward to Paper. But the author made so many mistakes and included so many poorly explained (perhaps he himself did not fully understand what he had read?) glosses about the development of language and related areas in just the beginning sections that I found myself questioning the veracity of not only the material he presents in this volume, but in his others as well. A disappointment.