Armando Petrucci

Written by one of the world's leading paleographers, this book poses two fundamental questions: When did human beings begin - and why have they continued - to decide that a certain number of their dead had a right to a "written death"? What differences have existed in the practice of writing death from age to age and culture to culture? Drawing principally on testimonials intended for public display, such as monuments, tombstones, and grave markings, as well as on scrolls, books, manuscripts, newspapers and posters, the author reconstructs the ways Western cultures have used writing to commemorate the dead, from the tombs of ancient Egypt to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In this fascinating book, one of the world's foremost authorities on writing and the social history of books discusses reading and writing in medieval Italy. Armando Petrucci addresses concerns central to paleographers and to cultural historians: how people learned to write, what they wrote, what they read, how scribes were trained, the purposes for which books were copied, and how ideas about books influenced their use, preservation, and transmission.