The Notebook
About This Book
Roland Allen offers the first history of the notebook, tracing where this ordinary object came from and how it reshaped the way people think. He examines why notebooks became such dependable aids to creative work and how the habit of keeping one can change a person's thinking. The book moves from the busy trading streets of medieval Florence to the private studies of great thinkers. Its subjects include the artists Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, the scientists Isaac Newton and Marie Curie, and the writers Chaucer and Henry James. Charles Darwin is shown working out his theory of evolution in small pocketbooks, Agatha Christie is seen plotting a hundred murders in cheap exercise books, and Bruce Chatwin's unintended influence on the creation of the Moleskine is traced. Alongside these famous names, Allen introduces a wide range of people who used notebooks as a place to think and to help shape the modern world, including cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers and mathematicians. The book argues that the notebook matters more now, in an era of artificial intelligence and constant digital distraction. Allen explains how bullet-pointed lists can help people with ADHD, how journal writing can ease PTSD, and how patients' diaries can help soften the trauma of waking from a coma. He presents the simple act of writing by hand as something with real effects on how we think and feel, making us more creative, more productive and happier.
ISBN: 9781788169325
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