MAN, JOHN — Alpha Beta

Headline Book Publishing Ltd. 2001. (ISBN: 9780747264477). Paperback. Paperback in very good condition. Un read. How 26 letters shaped the western world. Times Educational Supplement: Book of the Week/ September 8, 2000 This book comes at the perfect moment.. as we rediscover the importance in early reading of "cracking the alphabetic code." The story of how that code came into being is a fascinating one, and Man is the ideal writer to tell it. His scholarship seems boundless.. he also has a journalist's ear for a story, beguiling us with innumerable asides. Best of all though is the story that inspired the book: the discovery in the early 1990's, of some signs cut into a rockface beyond Egypt's Valley of the Kings. It is straight out of Indiana Jones.. Man's own theory.. is a tour de force, linking the creation of the alphabet to the emergence in Sinai of that other Alpha and Omega - the God of Abraham and Moses, of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.. This book is an opportunity to rediscover those 26 letters.. and to marvel at a system of communication that for 4,000 years.. has allowed readers freedom of access across time and space. Sunday Telegraph 'absorbing tale. many surprises on the way'. Used: Acceptable.