The information : a history, a theory, a flood

 by James Gleich. Acutely sensitive to the human drama involved in pioneering thought and discovery, best-selling science and technology writer Gleick has developed an epic sense of humankind's quest for mastery of information, the vital principle. In this tour de force, the first book to fully chronicle the story of information and how it has transformed human thought and life, Gleick follows the path from the ingenious codes used by African drummers to the invention of the alphabet and writing, which made possible deep analysis and logic, the bedrock for information theory. As Gleick elucidates the roles cryptography, libraries, quantum physics, and molecular biology play in information science and tracks the cresting waves that rapidly delivered the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, computer, and Internet, he vividly profiles a compelling cast of geniuses. There's prescient Charles Babbage and witty, surpassingly gifted Ada Byron King, logic master George Boole, and the too-little-known Claude Shannon, whose elegant solutions include designating the bit as the smallest possibly quantity of information. Gleick is equally illuminating in his explications of such forces key to information as uncertainty, entropy, memes, and randomness. This is intellectual history of tremendous verve, insight, and significance. Unfailingly spirited, often poetic, Gleick recharges our astonishment over the complexity and resonance of the digital sphere and ponders our hunger for connectedness. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Destined to be a science classic, best-seller Gleick's dynamic history of information will be one of the biggest nonfiction books of the year. --Booklist (Check Catalog)