As for the alphabet itself, it seems to have been a collaboration, invented just once, probably near Egypt. "Writing," says Flanders, "was altogether a complex business" that historians believe was invented just three times: the Chinese used written words as early as 1600 BCE, scholarly Egyptians embraced written words, and so did the Mayans. Not until the Sumerians invented cuneiform did orderly rows and columns became standard for most communication still, cuneiform was "ideographic" and abstract. That was easy, but also complicated: a haphazardly-placed symbol might indicate a bird, for instance, but if paired with something else etched near it, it had a different meaning. 'One of the many fascinations of Judith Flanders' book is that it reveals what a weird, unlikely creation the alphabet is.Long before the invention of the letters you see on this page, humans communicated with symbols. Along the way, the reader encounters a wonderful cast of characters,from the great collector Robert Cotton, who catalogued his manuscripts by the names of the busts of the Roman emperors surmounting his book cases, to the unassuming sixteenth-century London bookseller who ushered in a revolution by listing his authors by 'sirname' first. In A Place for Everything, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders fascinatingly lays out the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its use as a sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria to its current decline in prominence in the digital age. Long before Google searches, this magical system of organization gave us the ability to sort through centuries of thought, knowledge and literature, allowing us to sift, file, and find the information we have, and to locate the information we need. From school registers to electoral rolls, from dictionaries and encyclopaedias to library shelves, our lives have been ordered from A to Z. And yet the order of the alphabet continues to play a major role in our adult lives.
Once we've learned it as children, few of us think much of the alphabet and its familiar sing-song order. is a meticulour historian with a taste for the offbeat the story of the alphabet suits her well.
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