As presented by Amaranth Borsuk in The Book, it is important to understand the history of the book and how it developed as an object within our culture before we can have debates on what classifies as a book. While the portable, durable, economically accessible book we know today may seem like a fixed cultural artifact, throughout its history, the book has continuously transformed with material availability and changing societal needs. Reflecting on the earliest books being made from papyrus in Egypt, bamboo in China, and animal hides in Greece to name a few of the first bookish societies, books have always been in a close personal connection to its cultural context.

In considering these various origins and how their ideas merge or influence each other, it is clear that the book which has resulted today is a cumulative product of human innovation rather than one that can be claimed by one culture or event. To help explain this phenomenon, Borsuk cites D. F. Mckenzie who writes in Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, “A book is never simply a remarkable object. Like every other technology, it is invariably the product of human agency in complex and highly volatile contexts,” (42). The book has never been a static object and is continuously recreated by humans to cater to the shifting needs of time and various societal climates. While the book has largely been credited as a German innovation due to the printing press revolutionizing book production and accessibility, by looking back to understand the origins are writing and writing production, it is clear that the creation of the book is a global, collective effort. While humans more and more enter an age of technological innovations being a competition of time and ownership, the book is one of centuries long development that has been slow and collaborative. As a chain of evolution and reimagination, the book is strong in representing diversity of thoughts and being adaptable to ever changing needs. With the definition of what makes a book continuously up for debate, the book should be recognized as a global success of humanity in creating a living form of technology that may adapt to informational and distributive needs of any given culture.