Most people have heard of the Greek letters alpha and beta—the source of our English word "alphabet." But not everyone would recognize the sound or look of the written symbols used by the Thais or Tibetans, the Hindus of India, or the Cherokee Indians of North America.

In this unique book, Leonard Everett Fisher has beautifully reproduced thirteen alphabets in use around the world today—Arabic, Cherokee, Chinese, Cyrillic, Eskimo, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Sanskrit, Thai, and Tibetan.  The alphabets display a wonderful variety of visual forms, from the graceful flow of Arabic letters and the delicate lines of Japanese, to the angles and arcs of Eskimo.

A brief introduction traces the beginnings of man's written language to the system of wedge-shaped marks called cuneiform, developed by the Sumerians around 3,000 B.C. Other early writing systems included the Egyptian symbols called hieroglyphs...the pictographs used by Semitic people on the Sinai peninsula...and a set of characters based on the Sinai alphabet later developed by Phoenician traders.  Most modern alphabets—including our own English alphabet—evolved over thousands of years from these early Sinai-Phoenician writing systems.

Whatever its derivation, each of the thirteen alphabets reproduced in this book reflects the culture and history of the people who use it today.  The author has included some intriguing information about each alphabet and its origins.  And his striking scratchboard illustrations complement the alphabets and help place each in its cultural context.

From the dust jacket