In You Can’t Read This, Toronto writer Val Ross turns her capable hand to the fraught history of reading and writing. Spanning several centuries, the text touches on many topics, including duplicitously bilingual colonial treaties, the development of Braille, and the secret dangerous efforts by Afghani girls to learn to read during the Taliban era. As in her award-winning book The Road to There, Ross takes an admirably global approach to this history, with chapters on Japan, Korea, and New Zealand, for example, as well as on Europe and the U.S. This thorough approach carries over to the index and bibliography, making the book a useful and accessible historical resource, amply illustrated with colour images.

Each short chapter provides some fine biography or history, with the story of Victorian amateur archaeologist Arthur Evans, the 13th-century sacking of Baghdad, and the development of the Gutenberg Bible as particular standouts. (As this list suggests, the history of reading provides neat forays into an impressive range of other historical topics.)

Despite Ross’s nimble prose and attention to detail, however, You Can’t Read This lacks the dynamism that made The Road to There such an engaging read. This flatness may be due in part to its attempt to bring together such disparate experiences and periods. The book’s insistent repetition of its theme – the power of the written word – casts a faintly pedantic air over the enterprise while failing to provide coherence to the volume as a whole. Dipping into this book in bits may be more rewarding than becoming tangled in its thematic thread.