Praise for The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
"Bold and thrilling . . . informative and uplifting, The Notebook may leave you feeling that you should chuck away your smartphone, pick up a nice, clean journal and start jotting."
—Wall Street Journal
"Like the many examples it covers, Allen’s history of the notebook both instructs and entertains."
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
"As an intimate repository for thought, notebooks, Allen amply shows, are essential. An enthusiastic, informative cultural history."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"I LOVED this book. We don’t really think of notebooks and journals as a piece of technology, but of course, they are—there were dark days before such wonderful things existed."
—Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic
"Moving and inspiring. You should pick up this book if you have any interest in notetaking, knowledge management, creativity, productivity, thinking, the human mind, or history, because the notebook has been and continues to be integral to all of those to a degree I didn't truly appreciate until I read it myself."
—Tiago Forte, author of The PARA Method and Building a Second Brain
"Allen’s history of thinking on paper is a compelling exploration of human evolution itself. It’s a timely reminder of what technology can be: a way to bring us closer to each other, and ourselves."
—Ryder Carroll, Bullet Journal founder and author of The Bullet Journal Method
“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 his writing has the lightness of touch needed to turn the dry pages of notebooks into living historical documents.”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
"Surprisingly revealing."
—The Times
"Thinking about notebooks caused Roland Allen to wonder about their connection to creativity, culture and industry; what they could tell us about their owners; why keeping a diary brought contentment, and why the longhand form has survived the digital . . . A different, fascinating, entertaining, witty approach to writing cultural history."
—The Irish Times
"Allen takes us on an upbeat and stimulating journey . . . a celebration of intimacy in various guises."
—Sydney Morning Herald
"Notebooks have long provided a place for us to record our activities and creativities. So shows this enthralling cultural history, which shows how the act of noting things down has shaped the world for centuries."
—The Bookseller
"Allen’s history also demonstrates how essential the human act of recording observations is . . . A delight to read, The Notebook is a reminder of our most vital tool."
—The Idler
"Fluently and engagingly written."
—The Art Newspaper
"A book to savour."
—Country Life
★ 2024-06-13
A celebration of the joys of putting pen to paper.
British publisher and diarist Allen brings his love of notebooks to a lively, wide-ranging history of bound blank pages. Notebooks, he writes, “interest me as a technology that has had tangible effects on the world around us.” The author started keeping a journal in 2002: “Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which in turn made those around me happier), and I learned never to go to a doctor’s appointment, or a meeting of any kind, without taking notes of what I heard.” Wondering how and when notebooks were invented and why their use spread, he decided to fill a historical gap with the results of his own sleuthing. After an overview of record-keeping in the ancient world—diptychs, papyrus, and parchment—Allen begins in 13th-century Florence, where ledgers, first on parchment and later on paper, a superior product imported from Provence, became indispensable for business. Books of paper became indispensable for many artists, as well, who developed their techniques in sketchbooks. Notebooks grew in popularity, finding uses in the home to keep track of accounts or compile personal anthologies of entries such as prayers, medical recipes, riddles, and poems. Those anthologies evolved into commonplace books, favored by Erasmus and W.H. Auden, among others. Ships’ logs, travelogues, recipe books, and naturalists’ findings are just a few of the many uses for notebooks across the centuries. Isaac Newton, Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner, and Charles Darwin recorded their discoveries in notebooks; Leonardo da Vinci worked out inventions. In treating chronic pain or PTSD, physicians have found that for patients, keeping a diary has “proven therapeutic value.” As an intimate repository for thought, notebooks, Allen amply shows, are essential.
An enthusiastic, informative cultural history.
