The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood

From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. 
 
Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live.

A New York Times Notable Book
A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year
Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award 

• Chaos: Making a New Science
• Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
• Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators
• Information: A Very Short Introduction
• You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
• Time Travel: A History
• Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
• Information Theory: A Tutorial Introduction
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
• A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age