Paper

From the author of The Bad Book Affair comes a witty, personal, and entertaining meditation on the history and significance of paper?an international cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of this essential product.

Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear. Would anything be lost? Everything would be lost.

Paper 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.

A single sheet can be a love letter or a death warrant, a priceless manuscript or a piece of litter.

• A Rich Social History: From birth certificates to beer mats, discover how this humble material has shaped human civilization, becoming the essential partner to all our enterprises.
• The History of Technology: Chart the evolution of papermaking from an ancient craft to a marvel of industrial machinery, and explore how paper became the foundation for everything from money to maps.
• A Book for Bibliophiles: Delve into the world of bibliomania, celebrating the role of paper in the creation of books, diaries, and letters?the physical record of our collective memory and personal lives.
• Paradoxes of the Paper Age: In an era of digitization, explore the ?ghosts and shadows? of paper that remain, proving why this endlessly versatile material will always be with us.