Letter Perfect : The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z (Paperback)

from kslade

Really fascinating book on how the individual characters of our current alphabet came to be. Many go clear back before the Phoenicians and then developed through the Greek and Roman alphabets. They used to all have meanings too. The "A" is an upside down "ox head" for instance.

from TheAmpersand

An entertaining and informative, if somewhat methodical, trip through the alphabet that traces the historical development of the twenty-six letters that we all know and love. Sacks is good at helping helping readers consider language from a molecular perspective, encouraging us to reexamine the r...

from jorgearanda

A fascinating look at the history of our alphabet. Sacks is entertaining and engaging, and his topic is deeper and more satisfying than it'd seem to be at first glance. The book grows repetitive and tired by its last third, and it annoyingly omits language-specific letters and symbols (from Spani...

from raizel

I found his explanation of the origin of the first alphabet---from a subset of Egyptian hieroglyphics by Semitic mercenaries in Egypt---based on recent archeological finds---fascinating. I don't know enough about this subject to know how accepted this theory is. This is all shown In a "sidebar" w...

from PhoenixTerran

This was a very intriguing book about, well, the alphabet. The English alphabet to be exact. The first part of the book deals with the alphabet's history in general. Following are twenty-six chapters, each devoted to a single letter of the alphabet. In alphabetic order, nonetheless. (Never would'...