How did lines on a page become accepted as words that can be read by most anyone who knows the spoken language? With creativity and boundless curiosity, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at the many times that human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, discussing the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; Sequoyah single-handedly inventing a script for the Cherokee language; and even the enigmas of undeciphered scripts like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript.

"Ferrara's survey is intricate and detailed, bolstered by photos and drawings of the various writing forms…. The result is an intellectual feast."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)