The Alphabet

Also the fact that the book is essentially an assemblage of 26 newspaper columns, one for each letter, meant that several topics came up again and again without ever being fully explored. One topic that I already know a bit about, but where I'd hoped to learn more, was the Great Vowel Shift. One topic that I know almost nothing about and where I found the information provided infuriatingly minimal and repetitive was the evolution of minuscule letters, and indeed why we have upper and lower case now - Georgian doesn't, for instance, and Arabic takes a whole different approach to letter shapes.

I particularly hated the practice of inserting explanatory boxes for sub-topics within the main text. Apart from the fact that it makes the main argument (such as it is) difficult to follow, I found (ironically) the fonts used for some of the boxes difficult to read. And the structure became confusing rather than ordered. The only person who has really done these vignettes well is Norman Davies in his Europe: A History, and others shouldn't try to copy him unless they really know what they are doing.

So, in summary, an unsatisfying book on a fascinating subject.


An easy to read but complete history of the alphabet   March 11, 2004
Eoin McAuley (Dublin, Ireland)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

This book by David Sacks is excellent. It gives the full history of the alphabet from the first known alphabetic inscriptions up to modern-day uses. There's plenty of information mixed with stories about the letters, examples of their use in advertising and diagrams of their evolution.

One problem with the book is that it originated as 26 separate articles in a newspaper, one for each letter. These have been tied together, making one chapter for each letter and an introductory section, but there is still a fair amount of repetition, because the story of the Phoenician alphabet ends up being repeated in just about every chapter. Extra sections on subjects like the evolution of printing are thrown into the middle of chapters as "insets", but these can take four or five pages, so the flow of reading is constantly being interrupted. Even within these, pictures can have long titles stretching to half a page, the reading of which interrupts the flow of the inset. So it's not an easy book to read.

Another possible problem is that the book accepts as incontrovertible the origin of Semitic writing in Egypt in 2000 BC, and cites as evidence the two inscriptions found in Wadi El Hol. These are not as convincing as the author seems to think and are not as far as I can tell universally accepted.

All in all, though, an excellent book.