The Paper Trail: An Unexpected History of a Revolutionary Invention

In this well-researched history, Monro (China: City and Exile), a British reporter who has written extensively on China, digs into the long and complicated evolution of paper and its effects on civilization. “This is the story of how that soft and supple substance became the vehicle of history and the conduit for landmark innovations and mass movements across the world,” he writes. Monro begins with paper’s emergence in ancient China, and as he chronicles how paper supplanted other forms of writing material, he follows the trail of art, literature, religion, and politics across the course of centuries and continents. His primary focus is on how paper affected Chinese culture, but as the technology spreads to other countries, he studies those trails as well, leading to tangents on the printing press, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and more. Religion plays a large role, with the Bible, the Qur’an, and Buddhist texts finding widespread audiences thanks to the portable, convenient medium. Monro finishes by acknowledging the power of the book itself and how “paper’s greatest role has been as courier of books to individual owner-readers.” The result is an engaging, lively, informative examination of a ubiquitous resource and its multimillennia influence on the world. Agent: Patrick Walsh, Conville and Walsh Literary. (Apr.)