The Story of Writing

The Story of Writing was not what I expected and more than I expected. I bought the book because of my interest in ancient scripts, languages and archaeology thinking it would be a good general overview. When I first glanced through it I thought I had bought a book more oriented toward middle school audience....that would be a wrong assumption. It is not an in depth scholarly work written for an audience with a graduate degree but it is still an engaging book for a later high school, freshman college level. It covers all of the major ancient scripts including cuneiform, Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs and much more. It goes into just enough depth to get you interested in learning more which I am sure is exactly what the author intended. show more The illustrations, explanations and examples are all well done. I didn't know a lot about cuneiform prior to reading this book and now I want to learn more. Also, even after reading several books about Mayan hieroglyphs I have never been able to understand the calendar system until Andrew Robinson was able to illustrate and explain it in such a clear way.

Very good. I recommend this to anyone with a budding interest in scripts and ancient languages. show less

offers a good overview of the written language and how it has been deciphered and developed overtime, doesn't get in depth-good overview.

Interesting reading, but bad editing and glaring omissions of recent research (and some not so recent) can make for frustrating reading.

I was disappointed when I read it a couple of years back, and I forgot why. I don't intend to go back and experience the disappointment again just to find out why.

Interesting. lots of pictures/photographs.

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