I was once a fan of Mark Kurlansky and still admire his voice and approach. But with each successive book the editing and structure grows worse and I think this will be the last that I read.

Paper is full of interesting information but barely readable. It repeats and contradicts itself endlessly, goes off on single sentence tangents (not the lovely chapter long tangents of Kurlansky's best work), and utterly fails to address technology (mechanical or digital) with any reasonable comprehension.

The best parts of this book are in the middle, which is focused on linguistics. The opening is a mess and the ending simply botches all of the machine explanations.

The introduction/preface is wonderful and covers the main themes perfectly. These are: To a first approximation, Jews, Chinese, Arabs, Muslims, and perhaps native Americans invented every pre-industrial technology centuries before Europeans. Technologies arise from cultural and societal need rather than appearing and shaping culture around them. Paper is a lovely and fascinating product intertwined with many industries and with a very complicated environmental history and present impact.