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The Greatest Invention
A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts
by Silvia Ferrara

translated by Todd Portnowitz

Farrar, Straus and Giroux : 1 March 2022 : 288 pp. : 9780374601621

Silvia Ferrara's The Greatest Invention is a code-cracking tour around the globe, sifting through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention—writing.

The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form such complex structures as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, taking us back in time to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond.

With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Incan khipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah invents a script all on his own; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, where high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. As Ferrara demonstrates, in the shadows and swirls of these ancient inscriptions, not only are we able to decipher the stories these peoples 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.

An exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance, 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’s future.

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Silvia Ferrara is a professor of Aegean civilization at the University of Bologna. She studied at University College London and the University of Oxford and, after several years as a researcher in archaeology and linguistics at Oxford, returned to Italy. She has taught at University College London, the University of Oxford, and Sapienza, University of Rome.

 
 

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Praise for The Greatest Invention

“The Greatest Invention is far more of a performance than a history — which means that, without Portnowitz's superior translation, it could have easily been a disaster in English. Portnowitz embraces Ferrara's spark and liveliness; he leans into her assertive statements and corny jokes. Surely he tore his hair out rendering her Italian emoji rebuses into English. His translation is not only seamless but electric, and deserves tremendous credit for the success of Ferrara's show.” —Lily Meyer, NPR

"Ferrara says she wrote the book the way she talks to friends over dinner, and that’s exactly how it reads. Instead of telling a chronological history of writing, she moves freely from script to script, island to island . . . She is constantly by our side, prodding us with questions, offering speculations, reporting on exciting discoveries . . . . Her book doubles as a manifesto for collaborative research . . . Rendered into lively English by Todd Portnowitz" —Martin Puchner, The New York Times Book Review

“A celebration not of achievements, but of moments of illumination and ‘the most important thing in the world: our desire to be understood.’ . . . For Ferrara, writing is part of a bigger story about ingenuity and curiosity . . . It is a panoramic view, spanning millennia between the multiple inventions of different scripts and more recent efforts to decipher their archaeological remnants . . . Ferrara writes with a breezy elan, nicely caught by her translator.” —Lydia Wilson, Times Literary Supplement

“Encountered at the right time, this book could ignite a passion, even change a life . . . If one has any doubts that the ancient past deserves our attention as much as the future Ferrara also energetically imagines, this book should dispel them.” —Michael Autrey, Booklist (starred review)

“Entertaining and complex . . . 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)

“Offers fascinating historical accounts, observations (especially on today’s retro embrace of iconography), and deductions (at heart, the book is a detective story) . . . Reveals the enduring power of the alphabet and how learning to write and read are physically mind-altering . . . Ferrara capably conveys the sensory magic of writing: sound made visible and tangible.”  —Kirkus Reviews

"From Crete to Easter Island, everywhere in between, and back again, Ferrara illuminates the sheer magic that the invention of writing actually was, while also sharing the pure joy of being a scientist. Plus, the translation is exquisite." —John McWhorter, author of Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

"Part reconnaissance, part time machine, part ode to our complex species, Ferrara's enchanting book unearths not only our writing systems but our humanity itself." —Amanda Montell, author of Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism and Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language