Tim Brookes’ Atlas of Endangered Alphabets is a wonderful glance at alphabets around the world, both created, imagined, and natural. Brookes’ treatment is brief but respectful of the cultures from which the alphabet originated. The visuals in the atlas are striking and easily understood. The selection of languages or alphabets is incredibly broad; the one negative is that the organization of languages is based geographically, however the book does jump around, to be back and forth with areas around Asia (with Europe stuck in the middle).

I highly recommend the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets to anyone who is looking for a quick read or coffee table book about language, linguistics, and travel.

More of an encyclopedia rather than an atlas, this collection looks at endangered languages across the world. It separates them out by region and has a brief entry for each language. I really liked that it had the characters for each language, but it was not what I was expecting/wanting out of this book. There were also no maps, which felt weird for an atlas.

This is such a great concept. I've read a decent amount about endangered languages, but never endangered forms of writing. It's interesting to see how many variations of scripts exist and just how different they are from the ones we're all familiar with today. Each section in this book is bite sized which makes it easy to pick up and read a few entries here and there.

This book isn’t what I expected. It’s organized not as a narrative but as an encyclopedia. I guess I should have figured that out by the use of the word “atlas” in the title, but honestly, that title is cryptic. I’m not sure of the purpose of this book or what I’m supposed to do with the information in it. To me, it feels like it should be a website, not a book. But I guess if you’re interested in an overview of the disappearing alphabets of the world, this book is for you.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I had absolutely no clue the number of writing systems that were in danger of dying out and being lost! Organized according to world region, there are so many languages included in this book. There are delicate flourishes as well as angular and linear scripts. I would have loved to see more examples and perhaps even selections written in each language, but this book is a stunning collection of endangered languages. Wonderful!

My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Book Group, Quercus for an advance copy of this book that shows the threats to the knowledge, history and cultural understanding of many people around the world, based on the fact that their alphabets are disappearing from human memory.

There is much too worry about in this modern world. I was promised flying cars, hover skateboards, and so much more. Now we worry about loss of freedoms, loss of meaning, and even worse the loss of language and alphabets. I had been aware, mainly through reading about American indigenous people about efforts to reclaim and reeducate their people about the language. However I never knew the plight of alphabets, and their importance. Nor how alphabets are becoming extinct all around the world, due to people dying, government intervention, governmental control and other factors. This is why books like this are so important. We live in an age of unprecedented access to information. We spend it looking up meaning to songs, or spreading rumors about weather weapons. Meanwhile knowledge from the past, important knowledge is left indecipherable and forgotten. An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets: Writing Systems on the Verge of Vanishing by Tim Brookes is a look at some of these alphabets, their history, why they are being lost to us, and efforts to keep their meanings alive.

The book starts with an introduction about the process of how alphabets are listed and the dangers that seem to be all over the world to them. 85% of the worlds writing systems are on the verge of being lost to history. There are many reasons. Colonial forces love to wipe out the past. Governments love to control information of all kinds, and people being able to communicate in ways that are different or uncontrollable can be seen as a threat. Saddest of all is that the people who knew the meanings are dying out, taking their knowledge with them, as most others might be indifferent to learning. The book is broken into continents, with each alphabet given its own entry. This includes a history of the alphabet, when possible, graphics featuring the alphabet, and examples. There are also mentions of how people are trying to bring the alphabet back, efforts to preserve, or in some case, efforts to ban the alphabet entirely. This is not a complete book, but does give a good idea of what is happening in the world.

I learned a lot from this book, and enjoyed it far more than I thought, though many of the entries filled me with a sadness I did not expect. One reads of people coming up with a set of graphics, in our own time, to help their people communicate, brining it to the world, even having Google make a keyboard for it. Brookes is a very good writer, able to share history, efforts, even interviews and fit them in the narrative without lecturing, but more sharing what Brookes has learned. These are inspiring stories. I loved the history, how many alphabets came from dreams. Or my favorite starting at a brick wall, and following the lines in it to create letters. I must admit I never thought of language and alphabets as seperarte things, and was quite surprised at how one alphabet can be adapted to another language, and used to save that language. Or its past. I don't know why this was new to me, but again this is why I love books like this. These books make me, remind me how much wonder is in the world. How much I don't understand, and how so many people are working in ways to preserve the past, and how much effort is being expended to destroy the past. On a nerd note, I do find it amazing how many of this endangered alphabets have made appearances as alien languages on science fiction shows.

If one is interested in language, or graphics and type, this is the book for you. For people who love to read about things they knew little about, and get a feeling for the larger world, this is also a great read, one that will make one think in different ways. Also, and I hate to trivialize this would be a great resource for writers and role players, to design alphabets for their campaigns or books. A very well done resource.

I have heard a lot about disappearing languages, but before reading this book I never thought about the fact that we are losing multiple alphabets at the same time. So this book was an eye-opener for me. The examples of various scripts from all over the world are accompanied by short entries that provide basic facts and a brief history of each case.

A perfect gift for anyone interested in cultural diversity.

Thanks to the publisher, Hachette Book Group - Quercus, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

"An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets" immediately proved to be a fantastically informative read. I liked reading about the selected endangered writing systems from all across the globe, and especially appreciated the sampling of letters and characters provided in each entry to give a little introductory taste. My only quibble is that I would have appreciated somewhat longer entries at times, as certain alphabets definitely perked my interest more than others. Other than that though, I enjoyed this opportunity to learn a little ore about such a varied range of writing systems.