White magic
Subtitle: the age of paper
By: Lothar Müller ; translated by Jessica Spengler
Contributors: Spengler, Jessica, translator
Publisher: polity
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 311
ISBN-13: 9780745672533
Subjects: Papermaking; Paper; Paper industry; Printing; History
Work titles: Weisse Magie
Description: Paper is older than the printing press and, even in its unprinted state, it was the great network medium behind the emergence of modern civilization. In the shape of bills, banknotes, and accounting books it was indispensible to the economy. As forms and files it was essential to bureaucracy. As letters it became the setting for the invention of the modern soul, and as newsprint it became a stage for politics. In this brilliant new book Lothar Müller describes how paper made its way from China though the Arab world to Europe, where it permeated everyday life in a variety of formats from the thirteenth century onwards, and how the paper technology revolution of the nineteenth century paved the way for the creation of the modern daily press. His key witnesses are the works of Rabelais and Grimmelshausen, Balzac and Herman Melville, James Joyce and Paul Valéry. Müller writes not only about books, however: he also writes about pamphlets, playing cards, papercutting, and legal pads. We think we understand the "Gutenberg era," but we can understand it better when we explore the world that underpinned it: the paper age. Today, with the proliferation of digital devices, paper may seem to be a residue of the past, but Müller shows that the humble technology of paper is in many ways the most fundamental medium of the modern world. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 274-291) and index.
Table of contents: title: Leaves from Samarkand; title: The rustling grows louder; title: The universal substance; title: The printed and the unprinted; title: Adventurers and paper; title: Transparent typography; title: The demons of the paper machine; title: Newsprint and the emergence of the popular press; title: Illuminated inner worlds; title: The inventory of modernity.