Stephenson Family Ties

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat,

 flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark

 pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the

 voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for

 thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is

 speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly

 to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,

 binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who

 never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time,

 proof that humans can work magic. — Carl Sagan 

William Verpanck Birney

Guy Rose