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A leading representative of the new wave of Chinese artists who emerged on the international stage after Tiananmen, Xu works in a variety of media.  His signature piece is Book from the Sky (198791), a series of limited editions and exhibitions of texts printed from hand-carved blocks resembling Chinese characters but in fact concocted, lacking semantic content.  No one could read Book from the Sky.  Anyone can read Book from the Ground, a clever novella recounting an office workers day.  Entirely pictogramsideographs, logos, emojis, symbols, signage icons--the book stands as an expansive, creative, sustained example of a language that has become popular online.  This global language needs no translation, and its form, the artists book, speaks for a persistent fondness for printed matter.  Not surprisingly, and to its credit, MIT University Press (which is known for good design) is responsible for publication.  MIT also published a companion explanatory volume--The Book about Xu Bing's Book from the Ground, ed. by Mathieu Borysevicz (2014)--but it seems premature.  Though it provides interesting background on the artist and his process, and on other aspects of the larger project (which includes video, installations, and so on), the collection seems padded and it ignores related art such related work as lettrism and wordless graphic novels.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.