Oct. 15
Nicholas Basbanes, a former investigative journalist, is the author of nine works of cultural history, with a particular emphasis on various aspects of books, book history, and book culture. His most recent book, and the topic of this talk, is On Paper: The Everything of Its Two Thousand Year History. On Paper was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowship in 2008 and was selected as one of three finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for 2014. The American Library Association has lauded Basbanes’s combination of “crisp technical explanations with vivid historical and contemporary profiles” as he “unfolds the two-thousand-year story of paper” and “[reveals] that paper is nothing less than an embodiment of humanity.”
