Interesting intoduction, but not a full text: A small book, recapping briefly the history of writing from Akkad and Sumer through the development of printing in the West and China. There are, in fact, two sections: First, the overview of languages and writing, without an overly forceful emphasis on the West, which avoids the taint of cultural bias nicely; second, a group of documents ~ quotations ~ from all sorts of sources, about writing, the alphabets, ideograms, and more. The documents are interesting, though a little confused, especially as regarding the plates that illustrate them; it is not always possible to tell what is what. And the first section is a fascinating overview, well written (or well translated [from the French], it's hard to know with a translation), though with little in it i didn't actually know already. The most important thing that a book of this nature can do is to whet the appetite for more. Consider mine whetted.

The alphabet has a fascinating history. This book's chief virtue is in its use of well-chosen pictures, usually in color, to illuminate the text.