Introduction: Earthrisk xi
Map and Timeline of the Written World xxiv
Chapter 1 Alexander's Pillo Book 3
Chapter 2 King of the Universe: of Gilgamesh and Ashurbanipal 24
Chapter 3 Ezra and the Creation of Holy Scripture 46
Chapter 4 Learning from the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus 62
Chapter 5 Murasaki and the Tale of Genji: The First Great Novel in World History 98
Chapter 6 One Thousand and One Nights with Scheherazade 121
Chapter 7 Gutenberg, Luther and the New Public of Print 145
Chapter 8 The Popol VUH and Maya Culture: A Second, Independent Literary Tradition 171
Chapter 9 Don Quixote and the Pirates 193
Chapter 10 Benjamin Franklin: Media Entrepreneur in the Republic of Letters 211
Chapter 11 World Literature: Goethe in Sicily 232
Chapter 12 Marx, Engels, Lenin, MAO: Readers of the Communist Manifesto, Unite! 252
Chapter 13 Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn: Writing Against the Soviet State 273
Chapter 14 The Epic of Sunjata and the Worldsmiths of West Africa 290
Chapter 15 Postcolonial Literature: Derek Walcott, Poet of the Caribbean 306
Chapter 16 From Hogwarts to India 326
Acknowledgments 339
Notes 341
Illustration Credits 389
Index 393