Random House
October 2013
On Sale: October 15, 2013
448 pages ISBN: 0307266427 EAN: 9780307266422 Kindle: B00CGI3DZS Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
A consideration of all things paper—its invention that
revolutionized human civilization; its thousand-fold uses
(and misuses), proliferation, and sweeping influence on
society; its makers, shapers, collectors, and
pulpers—written by the admired cultural historian and author
of the trilogy on all things book-related: A Gentle
Madness;Patience and Fortitude (“How could any
intelligent, literate person not just love this book?”—Simon
Winchester); and A Splendor of Letters (“Elegant,
wry, and humane”—André Bernard, New York
Observer).
Nicholas Basbanes writes about paper,
from its invention in China two thousand years ago to its
ideal means, recording the thoughts of Islamic scholars and
mathematicians that made the Middle East a center of
intellectual energy; from Europe, by way of Spain in the
twelfth century and Italy in the thirteenth at the time of
the Renaissance, to North America and the rest of the
inhabited world.
Basbanes writes about the ways in
which paper has been used to record history, make laws,
conduct business, and establish identities . . . He makes
clear that without paper, modern hygienic practice would be
unimaginable; that as currency, people will do almost
anything to possess it . . . that the Industrial Revolution
would never have happened without paper on which to draw
designs and blueprints.
We see paper’s crucial role
in the unfolding of historical events, political scandals,
and sensational trials: how the American Revolution which
took shape with the Battle of Lexington and Concord, began
with the Stamp Act of 1765 . . . the Dreyfus Affair and the
forged memorandum known as “the bordereau” . . . America’s
entry into World War I with the Zimmerman Telegram . . . the
Alger Hiss spy case and Whittaker Chambers’s testimony
involving the notorious Pumpkin Papers . . . Daniel
Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the
scandal of Watergate.
Basbanes writes of his travels
to get to the source of the story—to China, along the Burma
Road, and to Japan, whose handmade paper, washi, is as much
an expression of the human spirit as it is of craftsmanship
. . . to Landover, Maryland, home of the National Security
Agency and its one hundred million ultra secret documents,
pulped by cryptologists and sent to be recycled as pizza
boxes and egg cartons . . . to the Crane Paper mill of
Dalton, Massachusetts, a seventh-generation family-owned
enterprise, the exclusive supplier of paper for American
currency since 1879 . . . and to the Kimberly-Clark mill in
New Milford, Connecticut, manufacturer daily of one million
boxes of Kleenex tissue and as many rolls of Scott kitchen
towels.
Entertaining, illuminating, irresistible, a
book that masterfully guides us through paper’s
inseparability from human culture . . .
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