The Shock Of The Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 - Rilegato

So the new is old, and the old is new! Marvellous stuff, and absolutely spot-on. (Simon Jenkins)

he eviscerates our obsession with novelty... (Hugh Pearman The Sunday Times)

newfangled things are sexy, but how significant are they?...Edgerton provides a corrective by emphasising some of the overlooked technologies that affect the lives of many. (John Sparks Newsweek)

David Edgerton's The Shock of the Old is a book I can use. I can take it in two hands and bash it over the heads of every techno-nerd, computer geek and neophiliac futurologist I meet. (Simon Jenkins Guardian)

...iconoclastic and thought-provoking book...he makes a strong case that accords with what Virgil identified around 25BC as a definitive human characteristic. Our lives consist of semper cedentia retro: always going forwards backwards. (The Times)

It's rare for a book to make you see the world differently, but this alternative history does exactly that on almost every page. (Guardian)

Born in Montevideo in 1959, David Edgerton is one of Britain's leading historians, and has challenged conventional analyses of technology for 20 years. Currently the Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London, he writes for the broadsheet press and is a regular on television and radio. He lives in London.