Book Review: Ferrara, S. (2022). The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts. United Kingdom: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Abstract

The world of writing has made it possible for us to record, measure, and disseminate a wide array of human capabilities expressed separately, as Silvia Ferrara asserts in her illuminating book, through “language, art, biology, geometry, psychology, intuition, logic.” As touted by its author, this story about the greatest invention of the world has not only its own protagonists and scripts, but also the minds, the brains, and the abilities necessary to process and analyze them all through present-day scientific research.