Review by New York Times Review
PAPER HOLDS THE WORLD together. It wipes our foreheads, cleans up our spills, bags our groceries and disposes of our waste products. It floods into our mailboxes at home and across our desks at work. And it's not going away anytime soon. From the late 1970s, futurologists predicted that we would soon work in paperless offices. Though paper use in offices is decreasing, the average American in white or pink collar still generates two pounds of paper and paper products a day. That in turn is only part of the more than 700 pounds of paper that the average American uses in a year. A sheet of paper can be a work of art, its surface rich with life and visual interest. Timothy Barrett, the MacArthur fellow and master paper maker, moved to Japan to learn how to make washi: a translucent paper so delicate it hardly seems material. In more recent years, he has studied the solid white paper, made from cloth rags, that Europeans used for books from the 14th century on. These papers, he says, "had a kind of crackle and made you want to touch them." Now he makes them as well, from the proper ingredients, raw flax and hemp. Paper can be scary. For centuries, empty white pages tormented unproductive writers, as motionless cursors do now. In the 19th century, newspapers appeared several times a day, posters covered exterior walls and pillars, and shopkeepers wrapped everything from fish to books in paper. Improved methods of manufacture yielded paper cheap and plentiful enough to serve all these needs. But the new supply came at a high human cost. Herman Melville unforgettably described one of the new paper mills that fed the cities' appetites: "At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank paper.... The air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sunbeams, into the lungs." Mark Kurlansky has written wideranging histories of cod and salt. Now he has turned to another apparently insignificant, indispensable subject. More than 2,000 years ago, the Chinese realized that plant fibers, now known as cellulose, could be beaten, mixed with water and then left on a screen to drain until a sheet - a sheet of paper - remains. This modest, practical insight changed the world. Millenniums before anyone knew what cellulose was, paper makers separated it strand by strand from wood and silk, cotton and seaweed, and devised a writing material that is still cheaper and more adaptable than any other. The history of paper is a history of cultural transmission, and Kurlansky tells it vividly in this compact, well-illustrated book. He follows paper across borders and oceans - to Japan and Korea, on the one hand, and into Central Asia and what would become the Islamic world on the other - and watches it change. In Andalusia, Roman mills with enormous grindstones, originally used for making olive oil, ground the cellulose exceedingly fine, helping to make thin, smooth paper. In Fabriano in the Italian Marche, wire molds produced paper with handsome surface patterns and distinctive watermarks. Paper mills were not good neighbors. They were noisy, they processed vast piles of dirty rags, collected by ragpickers, and they stank of ammonia, often derived from human urine, which was used to break down the rags' fibers. Nonetheless, paper was needed, and mills spread. Inexpensive paper made possible the creation of enormous libraries, which in turn underpinned the intellectual flowering of the Muslim Middle Ages and the rise of printing in both Asia and Europe. Experimentation never stopped. The 18th century saw the creation of wove paper: a smooth paper, without the ribbed pattern created by traditional wire molds, which artists like Turner used to create dramatic new effects. In the 19th century, the steam engine turned paper mills into factories that made paper from wood pulp. Even in the digital age, Kurlansky shows, paper finds new uses - artists are working creatively with it as never before - and serves old ones: If print newspapers are in decline, print books look pretty healthy, especially as new technologies produce them more quickly and cheaply than ever. To put the history of paper in context means knowing its rivals, the other traditional writing materials and the cultures that used them. Kurlansky briskly surveys everything from Chinese oracle bones, cuneiform tablets and Egyptian papyrus to Mexican amate - the bark-based writing material, not a true paper, on which the Aztecs wrote their glyphs, though they may also have made real paper from agave. He has a sharp eye for curious details, like the information on the rituals and diets of rambunctious 18th-century French paper workers collected by the historian Leonard Rosenband (one of the mills had to provide their workers with pigs' ears for Mardi Gras and doughnuts for Palm Sunday, among other perks). Kurlansky loves explaining technologies, but he is no '90s-style techno-determinist. In fact, he cautions more than once against believing in the "technological fallacy." Human needs and abilities determine the success and the failure of new technologies. Paper and printing conquered Europe because European society became so curious, so hungry for new information that scribes could no longer produce enough books to satisfy it. Similarly, human tastes will probably prevent the computer from creating a world without paper. "PAPER" MOVES AT a fast tempo, like one of those legendary tours of Europe that announce, "If this is Tuesday, we must be in Belgium," and like them it's most useful as a broad survey. Kurlansky's historical judgments are often trite and not seldom wrong. He tells us that Europe was by 1500 "the most advanced civilization in the world," a traditional view contradicted by a mass of recent scholarship on Asia. His grasp of details is shaky. The writer of a history of paper should not refer to "handwritten manuscripts": The word "manuscript" means a text written by hand. He should also know something about such texts. Kurlansky describes medieval manuscripts as large and unwieldy. But Petrarch - whom he summons as a witness - carried his little, portable handwritten copy of St. Augustine's "Confessions" all the way to the top of Mont Ventoux. Though Kurlansky mentions the oral traditions that persisted in the age of print, he misses something much bigger: the vast expansion of writing that took place at the same time. Even as printers filled the world with books, governments invested in vast new paper-management systems, impresarios produced handwritten newsletters for select clients, and scholars devoted their lives to filling notebooks with excerpts taken from the vast production of the presses and systematically classified under hundreds of topical headings. The age of Gutenberg was also the age of the "paper king," Philip II of Spain, who took to signing documents with a stamp and waved them around at audiences like a Renaissance Joe McCarthy. Seen in this light, the expansion in paper use that followed the introduction of the PC looks less strange. The German journalist Lothar Müller, whose "White Magic" was published in English two years ago, does a better job of conveying these paradoxes in paper's story. He also evokes the varied ways in which writers and readers have responded to its strangely provocative white surface. Kurlansky offers a versatile introduction to this long and complicated history. But a true historian of paper needs to understand that every page has another side. ANTHONY GRAFTON teaches European history at Princeton.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 16, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Curious, vital, prolific, and witty, Kurlansky first made his mark with best-selling, material-oriented nonfiction succinctly titled Cod (1997) and Salt (2002), solid ground he revisits in Paper. Delighting in technical and historical facts, he follows the paper trail from its birthplace, China, across East Asia to Mesoamerica, Europe, and America, thoughtfully and entertainingly reporting on the development of alphabets and writing and the quest for a versatile, lasting substance on which to apply them. Kurlansky enjoys explaining evolving papermaking techniques on up to today's massive operations and detailing paper's use in such items as lanterns, gun cartridges, and currency, but it is the printed page's role in religion, commerce, art, science, and politics that yields the most fascinating and provocative true tales. As he reports on the rapid proliferation of paper in China and the Islamic empire, the world's first truly literate society; on its slow, often controversial adoption in Europe; and on the escalating demand in the American colonies in sync with the world's growing appetite for books and newspapers, Kurlansky profiles key individuals, from inventors to master printers, writers, artists, and revolutionaries, while incisively parsing technological breakthroughs and social conundrums. A fluidly narrative alternative to NicholasBasbanes' superbly comprehensive On Paper (2013), Kurlansky's work makes brilliant use of paper as a key to civilization.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kurlansky (Salt: A World History) yet again tackles world history via another object often taken for granted in modern society. In straightforward, no-nonsense prose, he traces the narrative of paper-and related inventions such as writing and the printing press-from antiquity to the 21st century. Throughout, Kurlansky operates from the premise that technological change is a symptom of societal change rather than its cause, using the invention of the printing press and developments in paper technology as examples. Unfortunately, having made such a strong claim about history and historical development, he does not adequately cultivate it as a working hypothesis. The book's real highlights arrive at the end, when Kurlansky examines the contemporary paper industry, addressing environmental concerns and solutions being explored in response. He concludes by arguing not to fear new technology or the disappearance of paper. "This is evolution, not revolution," he says, pointing out that such arguments against new inventions, including paper, have been around as long as humans. Despite what is both a fascinating topic, as proven by other titles on the history of paper, and a metaphysical experience (for readers of the print edition), Kurlansky's dull writing style and haphazard employment of his technological thesis make this an unsatisfying work. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction, most notably the critically acclaimed Cod and Salt, Kurlansky has done considerable research to produce this illuminating work. His main thesis is that paper didn't cause change; it reflected change. He attests that the appearance of paper, writing, and printing in various societies and times reflected emerging cultural and intellectual needs. In places, Kurlansky's narrative reads more like hastily assembled historical facts, presented in long listings. Despite these shortcomings, for readers interested in exploring how paper emerged and what impact it has had on people across the globe, Kurlansky is a graceful writer and an industrious researcher, presenting a useful start toward further research on the subject. VERDICT While Alexander Monro's The Paper Trail [reviewed below] is the more substantial account, Kurlansky's focus on the role paper has played in our modern world offers a necessary discussion. [See Prepub Alert, 11/2/15]-David Keymer, Modesto, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Kurlansky (City Beasts: Fourteen Stories of Uninvited Wildlife, 2015, etc.), who chronicles world history and human advancement via one telling topic at a time, chooses paper for his latest undertaking."Wood, bark, grasses, cotton, silk, seaweed"different societies at similar stages of intellectual development have all found substances, all containing cellulose, to fit their needs for the creation of writing materials. The widespread development of paper, though, came long after written language and the inventions of papyrus, parchment, and vellum. Kurlansky has a lot of history to sift through before he even gets to paper. Regarding paper's significance, the author states his opinion fiercely: "improved writing material had to be found, because the needs of society demanded it." This informs another aspect of his thesis, which is to disprove a "technological fallacy: the idea that technology changes society." The narrative moves from ancient China to the Middle East, to Europe and then across the Atlantic, chronicling advancements from cuneiform to calligraphy, accounting systems to movable type, the Industrial Revolution to the modern digital age, all with a focus on proving that changes in society brought about the need for these advancements. To express the need for writing materials for the abstract thinkers of ancient Greece, Kurlansky straightforwardly states, "the memory devices of oral literature simply could not express what they wanted to say." Or to reason why Europe developed printing technology much faster than Asian or Middle Eastern cultures: "they were societies in decline and didn't really need printing." The author effectively introduces the movement from one advancement to the next within the confines of a strong argument that never wavers, but the effect lacks personality. The most successful moments are specific stories of how paper and its relevant technologies became part of daily lifee.g., the "masterful drawings" of Michelangelo, which "were [found] folded up, with notes about the banal ephemera of everyday life jotted on the reverse side." Kurlansky has been breezier in the past, a better stylistic choice for books with this level of detail to become absorbing reads. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
