A History of Reading [Paperback]

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning, and at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist and editor Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the six-thousand-year-old conversation between words and that hero without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel brilliantly covers reading as seduction, as rebellion, and as obsession and goes on to trace the quirky and fascinating history of the reader’s progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.Praise forA History of Reading:

“Ingenious…a veritable museum of literacy. One feels envious of his passion…through it, his gift becomes our own.”—The New York Times Book Review

 “Manguel has taken on the daunting subject of our own passion for books and succeeded in turning it into a passionate book of his own.”—Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times

“No one who follows Manguel’s narrative to its conclusion need ever again feel guilty about putting off errands, chores, the bills, the kids, sleep—whatever—and curling up with a good, or even a great, book.”—Newsweek

“Manguel is a generous companion…he remains, in the proper sense of the word, an ‘amateur,’ a lover rather than a specialist.”—George Steiner,the New Yorker

“Richly detailed and utterly fascinating…what liftsA History of Readingabove mere charm and idiosyncrasy is Manguel’s reader’s soul. A few hours passed with [his] book will remind anyone who needs reminding that an astonishing bond exists between word and world.”—Sven Birkerts,Boston Magazine

“A highly entelC+