The History and Power of Writing

Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 0226508366 ISBN13: 9780226508368 Release Date: October 1995 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Length: 608 Pages Weight: 1.90 lbs. Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.1" Cultural history on a grand scale, this immensely readable book--the summation of decades of study by one of the world's great scholars of the book--is the story of writing from its very beginnings to its recent transformations through technology. Traversing four millennia, Martin offers a chronicle of writing as a cultural system, a means of communication, and a history of technologies. He shows how the written word originated, how it spread, and how it figured in the evolution of civilization. Using as his center the role of printing in making the written way of thinking dominant, Martin examines the interactions of individuals and cultures to produce new forms of "writing" in the many senses of authorship, language rendition, and script. Martin looks at how