Paper: An Elegy

From the author of The Bad Book Affair comes a witty, personal, and entertaining meditation on the history and significance of paper—an international cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of this essential product.

Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear. Would anything be lost? Everything would be lost.

Paper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business cards, fireworks an...