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Hook ups, hang ups, history, and one hot conversation.
The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret
By Seth Shulman
We all know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. But while a writer-in-residence at MIT, Shulman uncovered a slew of sources that indicated Bell copied the idea with the help of an alcoholic patent officer. Even more surprising, he wasn't driven by a desire for profit or fame--he did it for love.
America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940
By Claude S. Fischer
Now that phones go with us everywhere, it's hard to remember a time when we couldn't just call someone on a whim. Chronicling the early decades of telephone technology, Fischer, a sociology professor at UC-Berkeley, examines how its spread changed our collective way of life long before we all went mobile.
The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book that Everyone Uses but No One Reads
By Ammon Shea
Before Facebook, there was the phone book. First printed in 1878, this hefty tome has played a critical role in presidential elections, Supreme Court rulings, abstract art, and circus sideshows, as Ammon Shea reminds us in this quirky history.
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
By Tim Wu
Wu documents how control of every segment of America’s overloaded information industry--radio, telephone, television, and film--has been systematically seized by monopolistic corporate entities. With that in mind, he explores the ramifications of a comparable swallowing up of the Internet. Google, we're looking at you.
By Nicholson Baker
The master of novelistic minutiae records a phone-sex conversation between two strangers. The dialogue is occasionally erotic, often hilarious, and sometimes troubling as two lonely souls find a connection that's both intimate and long-distance.
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With dates announced for his upcoming Old Ideas concert tour, we celebrate the inimitable Leonard Cohen: bard, survivor, legend. His most recent album is a return to form for the balladeer, exploring signature themes of lust and longing, spirituality and struggle, all overlaid with a droll sense of humor as familiar as Cohen's prophetic voice.
When Jack Luxton hears that his estranged brother has been killed in combat, long-buried memories begin to well up like groundwater, and difficult choices Jack thought he reconciled himself to years ago turn out to be close at hand. Man Booker Prize-winner Graham Swift's novel plumbs timeless themes of regret, renewal, and the bonds of love.
The opening story in Matthew Battles's electric collection, "The Dogs in the Trees", documents the inexplicable appearance of arboreal canines. Further gorgeous fantastika follows, producing a volume sure to draw comparisons to Borges and George Saunders.
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