The Telephone

A New History

De: James Gleick

Narrado por: Edoardo Ballerini

A thrilling history of how we fell in and out of love with a technology that changed not just the world, but changed us.

'Science and technology never seem more exciting than when James Gleick is writing about them' – Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

'Forces you to see the world with new eyes. Blending expertise with a thrilling narrative . . . I loved it!' – Alice Loxton, author of Eighteen and Eleanor

‘Masterful. I learned so much and enjoyed every page of this richly researched, playful, and insightful book’ – Tiffany Jenkins, author of Strangers and Intimates

A supernatural instrument bringing voices from afar, the telephone burst onto the world stage 150 years ago, a triumphant story of individual ingenuity and vision. Instantly, the ability to speak across vast distances began to transform every part of life: from business organization to military tactics, from news gathering to sex work.

But the story of The Telephone is also one of corrupt scheming and ruthless tactics; the race to the patent office, to make money, a contest replete with bribery, fraud and speculation. And no one, not even its inventors, realised what the telephone was good for or how ubiquitous it would become.

As the telephone settled into the background – in offices and on streets, on bedside tables and kitchen walls – people forgot how they ever lived without it. Now, as landlines, telephone books and telephone boxes vanish into the past, science writer James Gleick - bestselling author of Chaos - shows how this commonplace object irreversibly changed not only the world but who we are as human beings.

'Charts our distance-compressing, time-shifting telephonic adventure with exceptional brio and subtlety' – Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Reseñas de la Crítica

The Telephone is at once a history of an invention and much more than that. It's a book about innovators and monopolists, tinkerers and geniuses, and, ultimately, the remaking – and re-remaking – of America. Science and technology never seem more exciting than when James Gleick is writing about them (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History)

Forces you to see the world with new eyes. Blending expertise with a thrilling narrative . . . I loved it! (Alice Loxton, author of Eighteen and Eleanor)

That little device in your pocket has transformed so much – Long-distance! Operators! The Yellow Pages! – into history. Who better to chronicle it all than the masterful James Gleick? From Bell and Watson to Steve Jobs, from patent wars to the evolving nature of conversation, Gleick charts our distance-compressing, time-shifting telephonic adventure with exceptional brio and subtlety (Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams)

Masterful. I learned so much and enjoyed every page of this richly researched, playful, and insightful book. I am sure it will spark as many conversations as the telephone has enabled (Tiffany Jenkins, author of Strangers and Intimates)

What’s so impressive and enjoyable about Gleick’s writing is that he takes a subject I thought I knew something about and finds fresh stories and new insights. A terrific book (David Bodanis, author of E=MC2)

A ringing history of one of technology's most ubiquitous objects . . . Gleick compresses a wealth of information into an impressively fluent narrative