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Bottom of the pile
5
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
3/100Critics
7/100Scholars
Author:
Pamela Paul
Publisher:
Crown
Date:
October 26, 2021
The editor of The New York Times Book Review elegizes bygone technologies and customs from the kitchen telephone to the school librarian in this nostalgic reminiscence on the analog era.
What The Reviewers Say
From the very first entry...we hit the ground running.
As Paul engagingly shows...replacements aren’t always an advance. Yet one thing Paul neglects to address, save by implication, is the power of 'no.' We are not forced in every case to accede to fashion, to all of modern technology’s demands, or to the dictates of contemporary sensibilities. Paul is incisive when she gets serious, as in her regrets on the decline of reading (especially of books), diminishing opportunities for solitude, and our eroding capacity for empathy. But some of her death knells are premature, a stretch, too sweeping, or off-base, while others come off as overly tongue-in-cheek.
The dislocations of the internet era get the listicle treatment in this charming if superficial survey.
