One good indicator to determine whether a book about runes is reasonable is to check what it says about the runes' origins.
Of course we all know that it was Odin who brought us the runes when he sacrificed himself to himself, hanging upside down in Yggdrasil, nine long windy nights and nine long days without having received any drink or food:
"Vęit ec at ec hecc
vindga meiði a
nętr allar nío,
geiri vndaþr
oc gefinn Oðni,
sialfr sialfom mer,
a þeim meiþi,
er mangi veit,
hvers hann af rótom renn.
Við hleifi mic seldo
ne viþ hórnigi,
nysta ec niþr,
nam ec vp rv́nar,
ǫpandi nam,
fęll ec aptr þatan."
as the Words of The High One, the Havamal, tell us.
In fact, the current status quo in science has it that the FUTHARK most likely derives from a mediterenean alphabet with discussions as to how strong the influence of the Greek and the Latin alphabets are. Members of various Germanic tribes had been serving in the Roman Legions, travelled and had business contacts to other people, specifically to the mediterean. Why people decided to create an additional alphabet when the established and widely known Roman alphabet should have been the first or logical choice for picking a "new" script remains in the mist of the past and any explanation is somewhat speculative.
Certainly, the Runes do not derive from the people of Atlantis or early stone age times.
The use of runes (in that case the elder FUTHARK) is proven for the time as of 160 A.D. There are artefacts that predate those from 160 A.D. by about 110 years but it is still in discussion whether these refer to the Latin alphabet or whether they indeed show Runes. There are no findings of an earlyer use than that - so far. The elder FUTHARK had then been in use until about 750 A.D., when with teh southerns Germans it was more and more exchanged by the Latin alphabet throughout the ongoing Christianisation or by newer FUTHARK Runes that were used by the Germanic tribes further north.
In pop culture we often see the elder FUTHARK runes in connection with the Vikings, which is in fact inaccurate as the Vikings clearly used the younger FUTHARK.
Anyways, the different Sets may be subject for other posts. Most of this background information can be found out there on the web and so I will keep most of this information rather short. If you are missing anything with reghards to the origin of the Runes or wish to have further info, please research, there are a lot of valuable sources there.
For now I hope you stay safe, dry and healthy.
