WRITING: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts...

WRITING: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts by Georges Jean and THE REIGN OF THE DINOSAURS by Jean-Guy Michard (Abrams: $12.95 each). These attractive volumes are two of the initial releases in the “Discoveries” series from Abrams. Although most ancient peoples believed the art of writing was a divine gift, it was actually developed for the mundane demands of accounting: The earliest cuneiform tablets recorded harvests, temple donations and tax levies. Jean traces the development of various forms of writing, including cuneiform, hieroglyphics, calligraphy and linear scripts. He explains how the Rosetta stone enabled scholars to decipher the mystifying inscriptions on ancient Egyptian monuments, and speculates about the still-hidden secrets of Etruscan, Cretan Linear A script, Rongo-Rongo and Ogham. The well-chosen illustrations, including excellent color reproductions of medieval manuscripts, supplement the text effectively. Michard offers a thoughtful account of both the extinct reptiles and the fascination they hold for humans in “The Reign of the Dinosaurs.” He carefully separates facts from theories, including Robert Bakker’s speculations about dinosaur mobility, and the ongoing debate over the purpose of the crests of certain hadrosaurs (often called duck-billed dinosaurs). With a detachment that is all too rare in popular science works, Michard notes that Walter Alvarez’s highly publicized hypothesis about cosmic collisions (an idea that remains more popular with astronomers and tabloid writers than paleontologists) is only one of more than 60 reasonable theories--none of them fully satisfactory--about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Each volume in the series features a supplementary appendix of documents, including first-hand accounts, letters, journals and, in the case of “Reign,” cartoons. Other titles include “The Amazon: Past, Present and Future” by Alain Gheerbrant, “Van Gogh: The Passionate Eye” by Pascal Bonafoux and “The Search for Ancient Egypt” by Jean Vercoutter.