By Hand: Endangered Alphabets, Calligraphy, and the Future of the Written Word
Publication date: November 15, 2025.
My next book, By Hand, springs from a paradox or puzzle that emerged during my fifteen years of research into endangered alphabets. It’s also the most interesting and challenging book I’ve attempted in my life, because I am writing it, in fact, by hand.
Here’s the genesis.
At least a dozen cultures, from Mongolia to the Philippines, are trying to save themselves—that is, to reconnect with their heritage and identity in the face of opposition and oppression—by reviving the ancient art of calligraphy, sometimes on paper with a brush, sometimes on palm leaves with a stylus, sometimes on bamboo with an engraving tool. The results are more than elegant and beautiful; they are a way of reviving traditional practices, awakening muscle memory, reconnecting present with past through an art form that brings grace and respect to their culture and giving it a voice. They are also rediscovering their traditional poetry, their sacred texts, their communal reading and writing practices. It’s a revival of their entire way of life, through writing by hand.
What makes this more than just a curiosity is that it is exactly the opposite of what is happening in the supposedly advanced West, especially in the United States, where writing by hand is being abandoned in favor of keyboards and digital devices. Far from connecting us with our traditions and our ancestors, this switch is creating a digital divide in which a younger generation cannot even read its grandparents’ letters, or historical documents written in cursive script. The National Archives are forced to appeal to folks of (ahem) a certain age to help read and transcribe literally millions of vital historical documents that can’t be read by software, or by a younger generation.
The United States leads the world in willful neglect of the art of writing. In France and the Netherlands, a schoolteacher may have to take a writing class to qualify to write on a blackboard in front of their class; in Japan a neatly handwritten resume is far preferable to a printed one, as the writing alone says important things about the applicant. My own state, Vermont, doesn’t even teach handwriting any more. Americans have lost sight of what handwriting is, how it benefits cognition, learning and retention—assets we are abandoning even as we need them most.
By Hand takes the reader on a totally original exploration of writing. Throughout the book I take the reader around the world to cultures whose writing is fascinating, beautiful, even sacred, to show the remarkable qualities writing can have when it has not been reduced to digital text, and when its main purpose is something richer than simply to convey information as quickly and easily as possible.
That outer journey is paralleled by an inner quest—to find out what we can learn about writing by writing by hand. I have written about hitchhiking by going back on the roads of North America with my thumb out, I’ve explored asthma from the viewpoint of an asthmatic, and death and dying by going with my mother through hospice care–now I take on the most challenging venture of my life—to go inwards to try to pioneer our understanding of how the act of writing works. Letter by letter. With a calligraphy pen. On, and I am hand-carving the cover as part of my work of rediscovering writing as art.
This book is intellectually groundbreaking, yet completely down to earth, its subject familiar to all of us. “You’re showing us something that is right under our noses,” an attendee at one of my workshops said recently. “We just never thought about it before.”
Anyone who is ashamed of their handwriting will come away from this book feeling unexpectedly reassured. Anyone who has kept a journal or diary will feel validated and understood. Anyone who has bemoaned the decline of cursive handwriting in the United States will buy copies for everyone they know. And surprisingly, anyone in the field of software development who specializes in writing tools will want to take notice.
And what do I have to say about the future of the written word? The future of writing depends on what we think writing is. If we see writing as a form of communication, as a chore, as a job to be done, or as a means of retrieving and conveying information as quickly and efficiently as possible, the future of the written word may be one thing. If we see writing as the astonishing, infinitely repeatable opportunity to explore and extend our ourselves and to invite others in on that series of discoveries, then the future of the written word may be something very different.
By Hand is not a cry of “Bah, humbug!” by a curmudgeon; it is an adventure story of wonder and delight that explores the pen, and the paper, and the human mind. 
PRE-ORDER By Hand (expected publication date: November 15, 2025)
Softcover edition $35
Hardcover edition $49.50
