The Paper Trail: An Unexpected History of a Revolutionary Invention

The Paper Trail: An Unexpected History of a Revolutionary Invention
ISBN-10
0307456692
ISBN-13
9780307456694
Category
History
Pages
386
Language
English
Published
2017-02-21
Publisher
Vintage
Author
Alexander Monro

Description

The Paper Trail is the two-millennia-long history of how a simple Chinese invention changed the course of human events. Tracing the emergence of paper from the imperial court of Han China to its subsequent journeys to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, through the empire of the Abbasid Caliphate and eventually, by way of the Silk Road, to Europe in the late thirteenth century, Alexander Monro shows how the medium allowed religions and revolutions, philosophies and propaganda to spread like never before. A sweeping, richly detailed, and vividly written tale populated by holy men and scholars, warriors and poets, rulers and ordinary men and women, here is the story not only of paper, but of human culture itself.

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