{
    "id": 422630,
    "slug": "the-greatest-invention-a-history-of-the-world-in-nine-mysterious-scripts",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "The greatest invention: a history of the world in nine mysterious scripts",
    "subtitle": "A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts",
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "A code-cracking mission to decipher the hidden truths and histories of our greatest invention - the art of writing.<br />This book tells the story of our greatest invention. Or, it almost does. Almost, because while the story has a beginning \u2013 in fact, it has many beginnings, not only in Mesopotamia, 3,100 years before the birth of Christ, but also in China, Egypt and Central America \u2013 and it certainly has a middle, one that snakes through the painted petroglyphs of Easter Island, through the great machines of empires and across the desks of inspired, brilliant scholars, the end of the story remains to be written.<br /><br />The invention of writing allowed humans to create a record of their lives and to persist past the limits of their lifetimes. In the shadows and swirls of ancient inscriptions, we can decipher the stories they sought to record, but we can also tease out the timeless truths of human nature, of our ceaseless drive to connect, create and be remembered.<br /><br />The Greatest Invention chronicles an uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research and the faint, fleeting echo of writing\u2019s future. Professor Silvia Ferrara, a modern-day adventurer who travels the world studying ancient texts, takes us along with her; we touch the knotted, coloured strings of the Incan khipu and consider the case of the Phaistos disk. Ferrara takes us to the cutting edge of decipherment, where high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer\u2019s eye, and further still, to gaze at the outline of writing\u2019s future. The Greatest Invention lifts the words off every page and changes the contours of the world around us \u2013 just keep reading.",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 288,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2022-03-01",
    "publication_date_latest": "2022-03-01",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [
        {
            "isbn": "9780374601621",
            "product_form": "BB"
        },
        {
            "isbn": "9781529064759",
            "product_form": "BB"
        }
    ],
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    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:45:40+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-29T00:34:54+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 2848,
        "slug": "farrar-straus-giroux",
        "name": "Farrar Straus Giroux ",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:08:55+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:09:48+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [
        {
            "scheme_identifier": "32",
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            "subject_code": "610",
            "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:45:40+00:00",
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}