The acclaimed editor of The New York Times Book Review takes readers on a nostalgic tour of the
pre-Internet age offering powerful insights into both the profound and the seemingly trivial
things we've lost.NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND THE DALLAS
MORNING NEWS • A deft blend of nostalgia humor and devastating insights.”—PeopleRemember all
those ingrained habits cherished ideas beloved objects and stubborn preferences from the
pre-Internet age? They’re gone.To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we
miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm we are faced with the
fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now takes place in filtered isolated corners of
cyberspace—a space that has slowly subsumed our physical habitats replacing or transforming
the office our local library a favorite bar the movie theater and the coffee shop where
people met one another’s gaze from across the room. Even as we’ve gained the ability to gather
without leaving our house many of the fundamentally human experiences that have sustained us
have disappeared.In one hundred glimpses of that pre-Internet world Pamela Paul editor of The
New York Times Book Review presents a captivating record enlivened with illustrations of the
world before cyberspace—from voicemails to blind dates to punctuation to civility. There are
the small losses: postcards the blessings of an adolescence largely spared of documentation
the Rolodex and the genuine surprises at high school reunions. But there are larger
repercussions too: weaker memories the inability to entertain oneself and the utter
demolition of privacy.100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet is at once an evocative swan song
for a disappearing era and perhaps a guide to reclaiming just a little bit more of the world
IRL.
