When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850 (review)

Daniel Headrick's excellent book probably could not have been conceived fifteen years ago, before the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The book embodies the truism that each generation of historians reinterprets the past for the readers of its own day. It belongs to a growing genre that seeks to expose the historical origins of our present information age--other recent examples include Michael Hobart and Zachary Schiffman's Information Ages (1998) and Tom Standage's Victorian Internet (1998)--but it sets a new standard for this genre.