The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image Book

Something happened early in human history that made us go wrong--something that turned men against women and caused sexist oppression and other crimes. Leonard Shlain believes that that thing was literacy, and in particular the literacy of a small male elite; the skills needed to read and write over-privileged one side of the brain and sent humanity dangerously mad. He pursues this hypothesis from Ancient Egypt to Greece and Rome and on into the Middle Ages; usual suspects like Moses and Plato are rounded up and given summary justice. Shlain has hopes for humanity--the increasing role of other media, media based on music and images, means that lost balance is being regained, that equality and the sanity it demands are flooding back. Books that argue so global and controversial a hypothesis need to be well argued, and Shlain is generally up to the task; a habit of special pleading and an autodidact's capacity to ignore contrary evidence are only flaws in his excellent presentation of his case. Various thinkers have suggested something of the sort of course, but Shlain develops those hints into a consistent and intermittently convincing whole. You do not have to agree to be impressed. --Roz KaveneyRead More