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Rating: 
Summary: God, what a great book, but beware of history nerds!
Review: This book is a set of essays passing on the lessons of old to a generation who could really gain from an understanding of past and similar events.Each author gets a chance to illustrate how the contentious events following the invention and deployment of printing technology mirrors the frustration of our current explosion of information. Its scarry how similar things are. But this isn't simply a bunch of writings by a bunch of history nerds. These guys go way beyond, and its for this insightful vision that the book is worth far more than its asking price. History has a great way of repeating itself, and its powerful to leverage history's lessons if one wants to lift himself above the fog of the tail chasers. One author (sorry, I forget who) talks about how reading morphed from a verbal and social activity to one characterised by silence and solitude, and how the computer may allow us back to the social impacts of storytelling. This is notable because we all know how much more is retained when you read aloud and when it becomes a social activity. But one essay in particular takes the reader into the dialog of 1500 something or other and I gotta be honest, I don't care _that_ much about history. Plus, almost all authors make the mistake of assuming the reader knows who they are talking about. There's history buffs and there's those who are interested in history from a practical perspective. For the most part this book is for the practical. Some of the authors could have benefited by realizing the powerful applicability of their work, and thus written it for the Homo-erectus man like me. But I really enjoyed this book, I read it in just under a week, and I have a two year old and a newborn. There were times when I was wishing there was a way to write the authors to thank them for their good work. Then it occurred to me that I could by writing a review on Amazon.
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