Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word - Hardcover

"Anyone who can write a history of writing in fewer than 200 pages is either foolish or brilliant. Matthew Battles is brilliant. This is not an encyclopedic chronology but an extended essay that skips gracefully across the centuries, stopping wherever the most interesting stories lie." -- Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader "From traces in clay to photon traces on the screens that surround us today, seeing roots and bones in the shapes of letters, Matthew Battles explores the deep origins and hidden structures of our written world. Scholarly and poetic, Palimpsest is a beautiful and engaging read for anyone who loves to write." -- Ethan Zuckerman, author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection "To call this book a profound meditation on what it means to be human would be to tell the truth but leave out all the fun. At once elegant and mischievous, Palimpsest is a great intellectual adventure that travels around the world on its way from the emergence of cuneiform to the future of cyberspace. It will charm and provoke any reader who has ever put pen to paper or typed into a text box, whether to attempt literature or scrawl today's to-do list." -- Elise Blackwell, author of Hunger and The Lower Quarter "This is book history as dizzying palimpsest. Traveling through centuries and across continents, Battles finds unexpected connections and echoes that resonate with our own day. Surely this is what life in Borges's endless library must be." -- Martin Puchner, professor of drama and of English and comparative literature, Harvard University "The written word changed literally everything, allowing for history, the law, and civilization itself. But rarely is it appreciated for its own sake and its own beauty. Matthew Battles has written an essential text on the essence of writing. Whether it turns out to be an ode or an elegy, we have yet to see." -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

Matthew Battles explores the questions of why writing exists and what it means to those who write. Born from the interplay of natural and cultural history, the seemingly magical act of writing has continually expanded our consciousness. It has been used as both an instrument of power and a channel of the divine; a means of social bonding and of individual self-definition. Now, as the revolution once wrought by the printed word gives way to the digital age, many fear that the art of writing-and the nuanced thinking nurtured by writing-are under threat. But writing itself, despite striving for permanence, is always in the midst of growth and transfiguration. Celebrating the impulse to record, to invent, to make one's mark, Battles re-enchants the written word for all those susceptible to the power and beauty of writing in all its forms.