Paper
Subtitle: an elegy
By: Ian Sansom
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
ISBN-13: 9780062295613; 9780062241436
Subjects: Papermaking; Paper; Papercrafts; History; CRAFTS & HOBBIES
Description: Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear. Would anything be lost' Everything would be lost. aper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business cards, fireworks and flypaper, photographs and playing cards, tickets and tea bags. We are paper people. But the age of paper is coming to an end. E-books regularly outsell physical books. E-tickets replace the paper variety. Archives are digitized. The world we know was made from paper, and yet everywhere we look, paper is beginning to disappear. As we enter a world beyond paper, Ian Sansom explores the paradoxes of the greatest of man-made materials and shows how some kinds of paper, and the ghosts and shadows of paper, will always be with us. Paper: An Elegy is a history of paper in all its forms and functions. Both a cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of paper, this book is a timely meditation on the very paper it is printed on.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-230).

Print version record.
Table of contents: title: Respecting paper : an introduction; title: A miracle of inscrutable intricacy; title: In the wood; title: Walking papers; title: Victims to the bibliomania!; title: Ornamenting the façade of hell; title: The soul of advertisement; title: Constructive thinking; title: The secret is the paper; title: The squiggle game; title: A wonderful mental and physical therapy; title: Legitimationspapiere; title: Five leaves left; title: The hollow in the paper : acknowledgments; title: Tearing the book into pieces : a bibliography.