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Drawing from Mythology, cosmology, history, the Bible, literature, and esoteric and conventional sources, this book takes the reader on a tour of each of the twenty-six letters that comprise one of civilization's greatest inventions, the Roman alphabet. In chapters that are descriptive, illustrative, and diverse, we are shown the history and development of every letter, how its shape evolved, how its characteristics were encoded, and how its history, attributes, and meanings were reflected in myth, literature, science, and religion.
This is one of those books full of the fruits of an inquiring and wide-ranging mind, rich in surprises and serendipities, and profusely illustrated with hundreds of letterforms and related drawings from ancient scripts to present-day digitized computer alphabets. The twenty-six alphabetic signs are, as Firmage shows, building blocks of our consciousness. Through the centuries they have been altered, written about, and thought of in ways that will surprise and delight even those who feel they are quite familiar with our letters.
Quoting sources as diverse as James Joyce, Rabelais, Dostoevsky, Twain, Elmer Fudd, and Bob Dylan, ranging from historical scholarship to deadpan comedy, from mysticism to McLuhan, from Pompeii to Poe to Pynchon, The Alphabet Abecedarium is a book for all those who think they know their ABCs or would like to learn them.
