A witty, personal and entertaining reflection on the history and meaning of paper during the (passing) era of its universal importance.
Paper serves nearly every function of our lives. It is the technology with which we have made sense of the world.
Yet the age of paper is ending. Ebooks now outsell their physical counterparts. Still, there are some uses of paper that seem unlikely to change – Christmas won’t be Christmas without wrapped presents or crackers. And the language of paper – documents, files and folders – has survived digitisation.
In Paper: An Elegy Ian Sansom builds a museum of paper and explores its paradox – its vulnerability and durability. This book is a timely meditation on the very paper it’s printed on.
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‘Engaging and dynamic’ Andrew Martin, Financial Times
‘Wonderfully diverting...Splendidly dense with fact and thought’ Steven Poole, Times Literary Supplement
‘Sansom’s scholarship is prodigious; his enthusiasm inexhaustible...He can make one laugh out loud by his placing of a single word’ Daily Telegraph
‘A collection of ever so erudite, witty, chucklesome essays, rich with digressions and asides, on paper, in many of its guises, that seeks to refute – and does refute – the idea that we are moving towards a paperless world’ Bookmunch
Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear.
Would anything be lost?
Everything would be lost.
aper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business cards, fireworks and flypaper, photographs and playing cards, tickets and tea bags. We are paper people.
But the age of paper is coming to an end. E-books regularly outsell physical books. E-tickets replace the paper variety. Archives are digitized. The world we know was made from paper, and yet everywhere we look, paper is beginning to disappear. As we enter a world beyond paper, Ian Sansom explores the paradoxes of the greatest of man-made materials and shows how some kinds of paper, and the ghosts and shadows of paper, will always be with us.
Paper: An Elegy is a history of paper in all its forms and functions. Both a cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of paper, this book is a timely meditation on the very paper it is printed on.
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 224 pages. 7.72x5.04x0.87 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __000748027X
Book Description PAP. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # VC-9780007480272
Book Description Condition: New. Dieser Artikel ist ein Print on Demand Artikel und wird nach Ihrer Bestellung fuer Sie gedruckt. A witty, personal and entertaining reflection on the history and meaning of paper during the (passing) era of its universal importance.A witty, personal and entertaining reflection on the history and meaning of paper during the (passing) era o. Seller Inventory # 5885528