Alpha Beta: How our alphabet changed the Western world by John Man, Hodder
Headline, 拢14.99, ISBN 0747271364
ONE of the greatest breakthroughs in the human story鈥攐ne that ranks
alongside the domestication of fire and the invention of the wheel鈥攊s the
alphabet. The wheel, after all, was reinvented in several cultures. This
alphabet, however, represents a single, once-only development of the written
script. And this small collection of signs changed the world.
As John Man tells us in Alpha Beta, one of the adaptive advantages
of the alphabet is its compactness. It compares favourably to the unwieldy
hieroglyphic and…
