Book Reviews, Fall 2022
The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Paul M. Dover
Reviewed by Rachel Midura
"Information Revolution is a history of information management, defined as 'new efforts to store and categorize information and the paper that contained it.' (2)"
Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory: Classification, Ranking, and Sorting of the Past by Ben Jacobsen and David Beer
Reviewed by Trang Le
"In Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory, Ben Jacobsen and David Beer examine the pervasive power of social media to intervene in one of the most intimate aspectsof our lives: how we remember."
Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Reviewed by Roopika Risam
"In addition to his insightful analysis of the influence of digital media on book history, where Kirschenbaum’s book particularly excels is in his critical insights on the habits of mind and cognitive processes that subtend the kinds of literary investigations one might undertake in digital literary archives."
Operation Valhalla: Writings on War, Weapons, and Media by Friedrich Kittler, edited and translated by Ilinca Iurascu, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, and Michael Wutz
Reviewed by Thorsten Ries
"Operation Valhalla collects German media theorist Friedrich Kittler’s (1943-2011) essays, lectures and interviews on war, weapons and media from the time period 1985 to 2009, in English translation."
A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences by Shannon Mattern
Reviewed by Hannah R. Hopkins
"In A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences, Shannon Mattern charts futures for urban planning and design that take into account the entangled, embodied knowledges that comprise a city."
Game History and the Local edited by Melanie Swalwell
Reviewed by Samuel Tobin
"This book successfully shows what can happen if we start to bring new places, regions, and locales into our thinking about the history of games."
Digital Suffragists: Women, the Web, and the Future of Democracy by Marie Tessier
Reviewed by Mariah Wahl
"Marie Tessier’s Digital Suffragists: Women, the Web, and the Future of Democracy scrutinizes the history of platforms that limit women’s voices and examines how the underrepresentation of women online impacts our digital democracy."
Chinese Internet Buzzwords: Research on Network Languages in Internet Group Communication by Zhou Yan
Reviewed by Xuanxuan Tan
"Chinese Internet Buzzwords: Research on Network Languages in Internet Group Communication addresses Internet catchphrases in Chinese cyberspace since 2010."
