The Paper Trail

This is the story of how the book you are holding came to be. It is the history of how a simple Chinese invention has wrapped itself around our world for over two millennia, along the Silk Road, through the Renaissance, the Reformation and beyond, enabling history's most momentous ideas to flourish.

Presents a story of how a Chinese product has for two millennia allowed knowledge, ideas and religions to spread across the world. In this book the author traces the invention's voyage, beginning with the Buddhist translators responsible for its spread across China and Japan. It became indispensable to the scholars, when the paper reached Europe.The Paper Trail tells the story of how a simple Chinese product has for two millennia allowed knowledge, ideas and religions to spread at an unprecedented rate around the world. Alexander Monro traces this groundbreaking invention's voyage, beginning with the Buddhist translators responsible for its spread across China and Japan, and follows it westward along the Silk Road, where it eventually became the surface of the Quran. Once paper reached Europe, it became indispensable to the scholars who manufactured the Renaissance and Reformation from their desks. As Monro uncovers, paper created a world in which free thinking could flourish, and brought disciplines from science to music into a new age.