James Gleick at The Brattle Theatre

Harvard Book Store welcomes James Gleick—bestselling author of The Information and Chaos, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award—for a discussion of his new book, The Telephone: A New History.

There are two ticket options for this event.

1. Book-Included Tickets: Includes admission for one and one hardcover copy of The Telephone, pre-signed by the author.
2. Admission-Only Tickets: Includes admission for one.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

From the bestselling author of Chaos and The Information, a sweeping history of the instrument that created modern life.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you” into a contraption he called the telephone. For the first time, a voice was carried along a wire. This feat has long been celebrated as a triumph of individual ingenuity and vision. In fact, the invention was a contest replete with bribery, fraud, and speculation, and no one, not even its inventors, realized what it was good for or how ubiquitous it would become.
It would teach us new words and a new way to speak, with instant feeling, instant possibilities. The Bell System would become the largest monopoly in history: the maker and owner of all America’s phones. The science from Bell Labs—pulsing wires, glowing vacuum tubes, the electronic transistor—would usher in the Information Age. Along the way, the telephone changed human nature, augmenting our bodies. It gave us the party line, the busy signal, dial tones, the late-night D.J., and the booty call. It magnified the possibilities of government, business, friendship, love.
Today we are more dependent than ever on little objects called phones, although their ability to make calls is incidental. The phone book and phone booth may be vanishing from memory, but James Gleick shows the telephone’s legacy is deeply ingrained in our networks, in our sophistication about networks, in the primacy of information, in the need for connection. The Telephone: A New History is a revelation: a story of technological breakthroughs that is also a universal history of intimate life.

James Gleick is a historian and biographer whose books include The Information, winner of the Royal Society and PEN/America science-writing prizes, and Chaos, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist. They have been translated into thirty languages. He lives in New York and London. Photo Credit: Charlotte Knee