Like silk and gunpowder, paper was invented by the ancient Chinese. In this peripatetic account of all things paper, from the ancients to the present, journalist Basbanes (Every Book Its Reader) follows paper's trail as it slowly reached the West by way of the Silk Road, arriving in Europe almost 1,000 years after its invention (it didn't get to England until 1494). But Basbanes isn't just interested in paper's conventional and specialized history. His aim is to show how the material has penetrated all aspects of our lives (books, stamps, money, blueprints, packaging, and so on). Each episodic chapter takes the author on visits to the people who paper our lives, from industrial titans to craftspeople rediscovering ancient modes of making paper to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at ground zero tasked with preserving a record of that single day. VERDICT An unhurried book that will be enjoyed not only by bibliophiles, librarians, and archivists but by many readers engaged by the study of the past and present.—Stewart Desmond, New York