View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-evolution-of-the-book-julie-dreyfuss

What makes a book a book? Is it just anything that stores and communicates information? Or does it have to do with paper, binding, font, ink, its weight in your hands, the smell of the pages? To answer these questions, Julie Dreyfuss goes back to the start of the book as we know it to show how these elements came together to make something more than the sum of their parts.

Lesson by Julie Dreyfuss, animation by Patrick Smith.