The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind

I first read this book many years ago, and did not really understand its significance. Recently I heard Professor Daniel Sperber speak about the book. He explains that prior to the invention of the alphabet, writing in pictograms meant learning a very large amount of individual symbols. Thus it was confined to the priestly elite , who controlled the religious and legal knowledge in their societies. The development of the Alphabet , a phonetic system wherein each letter signified a certain sound, and words could be formed through the combination of sounds meant that the process of reading is democratized. Most people can learn the thirty or so letters of the 'alphabet' and thus learn to read. The Alphabet meant a vast spreading of human knowledge, and a democratization of the process of learning. Diringer's pioneering study provides a guide to the systems of writing preceding the creation of the alphabet, and then traces the development of the Alphabet historically. This is a classic work in its field.

This book is one of the most fascinating vademecums ever written. Just about every alphabet and most more complex scripts ever devised by human beings are given here, with complete tables of the characters and their values. An attempt is made to trace the history of alphabetic writing back to its origin in the Middle East. The text itself deserves a five star rating The production of this edition deserves a one.... mine had apparently been treated rather shabbily in the passage from the Indian subcontinent (where a guide to alphabets must be quite handy) to the USA. I've wanted one of these ever since reading it on the shelves of the public library....