New book! Newer Reviews!

I mostly hate reviews. The book is finished. It’s going to press. There’s no turning back. Please don’t be mean.

Anyway, two major independent reviewing orgs…

Kirkus

A sweeping history of the printing press and the political revolutions that it helped spawn.

The printing press is such an integral part of contemporary life that it’s easy to take it for granted or even reduce it to a mere step on the march to digital publishing. However, as Allen (Arsonist, 2011) astutely observes, its advent was a watershed moment that wrought incalculable change — not just technologically, but also culturally and politically.

The culmination of Allen’s vividly written narrative explains the roles that paper currency and the printing press played in the American colonial revolt against British authorities; they shaped the very notion of legitimate authority as knowledge became democratically available to a newly literate group of readers. Overall, the author’s account is remarkably readable considering all of its microscopic historical detail, and he makes sure that the drama of the story never gets lost in the dense thicket of scholarly rigor. Allen skillfully presents the dangers posed by the advent of the printing press, as well, in searching discussions of counterfeit currency and obscenity. He also includes the earliest arguments for broadly free expression, which were made by such luminaries as John Milton. The book is, as Allen puts it, a “mosaic of starts and stops” rather than a “purely chronological” history, and it can be a bit discursive. However, it remains an absorbing and illuminating account.

A gripping, masterfully told tale of one of the modern world’s greatest achievements.

Foreword

Weapon of Choice is an arresting historical saga regarding individual agency and the chaotic power of the printed word.

The book balances its need to impart enormous amounts of historical detail with interesting and lively language. Both sophisticated and accessible to those without prior historical training, no detail is sacrificed during the book’s exchanges between historical actors.

Weapon of Choice is an arresting historical saga regarding individual agency and the chaotic power of the printed word.

About Nathan Allen

Formerly of Xio Research, an A.I. appliance company. Previously a strategy and development leader at IBM Watson Education. His views do not necessarily reflect anyone’s, including his own. (What.) Nathan’s academic training is in intellectual history; his next book, Weapon of Choice, examines the creation of American identity and modern Western power. Don’t get too excited, Weapon of Choice isn’t about wars but rather more about the seeming ex nihilo development of individual agency … which doesn’t really seem sexy until you consider that individual agency covers everything from voting rights to the cash in your wallet to the reason mass communication even makes sense….