GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

4 4 4 " FURTHER READINGS
of the Alphabet (Leiden: Brill, 1982), traces the emergence of alphabets in
the eastern Mediterranean region. The remarkable Ugaritic alphabet is the
subject of Gemot Windfuhr, "The cuneiform signs of Ugarit," Journal of
Near Eastern Studies 29:48-51 (1970). Joyce Marcus, Mesoamerican
Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), and Elizabeth Boone
and Walter Mignolo, Writing without Words (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1994), describe the development and uses of Mesoamerican writing
systems. William Boltz, The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese
Writing System (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1994), and the
same author's "Early Chinese writing," World Archaeology 17:420-36
(1986), do the same for China. Finally, Janet Klausner, Sequoyah's Gift
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), is an account readable by children, but
equally interesting to adults, of Sequoyah's development of the Cherokee
syllabary.
Chapter 13
The standard detailed history of technology is the eight-volume A History
of Technology, by Charles Singer et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1954-84). One-volume histories are Donald Cardwell, The Fontana History
of Technology (London: Fontana Press, 1994), Arnold Pacey, Technology
in World Civilization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), and Trevor
Williams, The History of Invention (New York: Facts on File, 1987).
R. A. Buchanan, The Power of the Machine (London: Penguin Books,
1994), is a short history of technology focusing on the centuries since A.D.
1700. Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990), discusses why the rate of development of technology has varied
with time and place. George Basalla, The Evolution of Technology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), presents an evolutionary
view of technological change. Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations,
3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1983), summarizes modern research on the
transfer of innovations, including the QWERTY keyboard. David Holloway,
Stalin and the Bomb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994),
dissects the relative contributions of blueprint copying, idea diffusion (by
espionage), and independent invention to the Soviet atomic bomb.
Preeminent among regional accounts of technology is the series Science