Description
The first history of the notebook, a simple invention that changed the way the world thinks.
We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, Isaac Newton and Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James; shows how Darwin developed his theory of evolution in tiny pocket books and Agatha Christie plotted a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books; and introduces a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers, and mathematicians, all of whom used their notebooks as a space to think—and in doing so, shaped the modern world.
In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever. Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper, he finds, can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and feel: making us more creative, more productive—and maybe even happier.
Praise for The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
“Remarkable … Allen points to evidence that maintaining a notebook with pen and paper is best for processing and retaining information. It can stave off depression and act as ballast to those struggling with ADHD. It is tactile, a form of ‘embodied cognition’, another example of the superiority of slowness … paying attention, caring, handwriting: this is love.”
—Guardian Book of the Day
“[A] restless, arresting new history of the notebook … packed with a wonderful range of insights and anecdotes … [Allen] has written a fine book on a fabulous subject.”
―Daily Telegraph
“The fascinating stories [The Notebook] tells certainly make you want to take out a pen and jot down a few points … Allen considers the notebook in its various forms, from the wax tablet to the electronic spreadsheet, and from early modernity to the present day … his writing has the lightness of touch needed to turn the dry pages of notebooks into living historical documents.”
―Spectator Books of the Year
“I’m something of a notebook addict. Now I know I’m not alone, as Roland Allen makes clear in his fascinating study of notebooks through history … Moleskine users will love this wide-ranging history of an everyday object: it is beautifully written and a complete delight to dip in to or read from cover to cover. A lovely book.”
—New Statesman Books of the Year
“Allen is a relaxed and amusing guide … although he professes to be concerned mainly with notebooks’ practical applications, he is a philosopher by stealth, keen to make the reader question where the mind stops and the rest of the world begins.”
—TLS
