Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z FROM THE PUBLISHER
Letters are tangible language. Joining together in endless combinations to represent actual speech, letters convey messages, tell stories, and create newspapers, advertising, and poetry. While we encounter these tiny shapes hundreds of times a day, we take for granted the long, fascinating history behind one of the most fundamental inventions - the alphabet.
David Sacks has embarked on an excursion into cultural history in Language Visible. Clearly explaining the letters as symbols of precise sounds of speech, the book begins with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 B.C.), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt, and traces the history of our alphabet through the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and up through medieval Europe to the present day. But the heart of the book is the twenty-six fact-filled "biographies" of letters A through Z, each one identifying its letter's particular significance for modern readers, tracing its development from ancient forms, and discussing its noteworthy role in literature and other media. We learn, for example, why letter X may have a sinister and sexual aura, how B came to signify second best, why the word "mother" in many languages starts with an M, and what The Story of O is. The book also features clever illustrations for each letter, such as Winston Churchill's "V-for-Victory" World War II hand sign, the trademark "N" from the label of Newman's Own salad dressing, and images from rock music and other pop culture.
Combining facts both odd and essential, Language Visible is cultural history at its most accessible and enjoyable.
SYNOPSIS
David Sacks has embarked on a fun, lively, and learned excursion into the alphabet–and into cultural history–in Letter Perfect. Clearly explaining the letters as symbols of precise sounds of speech, the book begins with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 b.c.), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt, and traces the history of our alphabet through the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans and up through medieval Europe to the present day. But the heart of the book is the twenty-six fact-filled “biographies” of letters A through Z, each one identifying the letter’s particular significance for modern readers, tracing its development from ancient forms, and discussing its noteworthy role in literature and other media. We learn, for example, why letter X may have a sinister and sexual aura, how B came to signify second best, why the word mother in many languages starts with M. Combining facts both odd and essential, Letter Perfect is cultural history at its most accessible and enjoyable.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
Sacks's quirky style makes the book as fun to read as it is enlightening … Sacks's obsession with language is contagious, and I can imagine few readers whose lives would not be enriched by what he calls his ''voyage of discovery.''
— Julie Walton Shaver
Publishers Weekly
Following up on his Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World, Sacks here delves into the origins of the Roman alphabet. Its beginnings appear to lie with Semitic-speaking mercenaries in Egypt, who borrowed from their overlords' hieroglyphics to create a system of sound-representing signs, many of which survive today in the Hebrew alphabet. Along the way, the Indo-European Greek language borrowed the Semitic alphabet of the Phoenicians, which when transmuted by the Romans gave us 24 of our 26 modern English letters. The bulk of the book offers beautifully illustrated capsule biographies of all 26, including J and V, which did not enter regular usage until the 17th century and were not standardized until the 19th. Beyond initial "A", the Sacks covers the first letters of several of the words for God; M, which begins an extraordinary number of the words for "Mother"; and "O," which requires the most shaping by the lips. There are essays on lexicographers (Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster, among others), on printing, and on how the letter X came to stand for the unknown in mathematics because Descartes's printer was running out of Ys and Zs to print all of the mathematician's equations. Such anecdotes, and the care evinced throughout, make this a demanding gem of popular linguistic history, and any book that includes a chapter called "The Birth of `V'ness" certainly avoids taking itself too seriously. (Aug.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Joining the sizable field of popular cultural histories of the Roman alphabet published in the last ten years (e.g., Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic Labyrinth and John Man's Alpha Beta), this contribution by Sacks (The Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World) is distinguished by its remarkably long and broad view of the topic and its omnivorous sense of fun. Sacks starts with a clear and appealing discussion of the genealogy of the letters we use every day, from the earliest known alphabet inscriptions found recently in Egypt through the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and Romans up to the present. He then devotes a chapter to each letter, discussing its development from ancient forms, attempting to identify and document its unique significance, and collecting a dazzlingly diverse array of facts that include its role in literature, media, and culture. From discussions of the letter A's role in meat grading, bond rating, student ranking, and punishment for adultery to Z's exotic associations with Zorro, Sacks makes the history of the alphabet a joy to read. Recommended for most libraries.-Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., ME Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An always clever-but rarely too clever-educational and entertaining history of the alphabet. Canadian journalist Sacks became fascinated with the history and use of written language while researching The Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. Although he educated himself by delving into scholarly research on alphabets, he decided to build this work around an approachable gimmick for a lay audience. After a sweeping 40-page introduction to the origins and evolution of written language, Sacks devotes a chapter to each of the 26 letters used in the English language, which is based on the Roman alphabet. He characterizes each of the letters as extremely important or less important in daily usage, surmises how that degree of importance arose, explains whether the connotations of each letter are mostly positive or mostly negative, and sprinkles in various tidbits, ranging from surprising to downright edifying. The letter A, which, of course, comes first, frequently carries the connotation of "best," as in a school grade of A or a Grade-A food product, but sometimes the connotation is negative, as with the scarlet letter A. The Roman alphabet is not alone in starting with A; most alphabets open with it or with its near equivalent. (Sacks explains writing systems that are not alphabetical, such as Chinese and Japanese, but does not dwell on them.) A, though, is not the most frequently written letter; E and T carry that distinction, in large part because they both appear in the oft-used word "the." Skipping to the last letter, Sacks calls Z a consonant that "can seem racy or elusive or just plain disadvantaged." The potential indignity of being the alphabet's caboose is compounded by one realweakness-Z is, on average, the least-used letter in printed English." But it sure can increase a Scrabble score when used skillfully. A refreshing combination of erudition and breeziness. Agent: Lisa Bankoff/ICM
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