This lavishly illustrated volume explores one of the most versatile, useful and enduring technologies ever invented: the book. "Books: A Living History" charts the evolution and influence of books around the world, from the cuneiform tablets of ancient Sumer through the development of movable type a[...]

As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary[...]