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The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
by James M. Tabor
The thrilling story of the nineteenth century's Apollo moonshot: an Atlantic-spanning telegraph cable that created the global village and changed the world.
In 1854, the American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing like it had ever been attempted. Field knew nothing about telegraphy, electricity, ships, or oceans, and science itself still lacked a universal theory of electricity. But he believed that wiring the world for near-instantaneous communication would bring about peace on Earth. In 1866, after enduring over a decade of global scorn, catastrophic failures, staggering losses, and brushes with death, he would finally lay his great cable, ushering in the global information age. From acclaimed author James M. Tabor, Lightning Beneath the Sea is an unforgettable tale of radical vision, unwavering determination, and triumph against overwhelming odds that transformed life on Earth forever.
In a propulsive narrative, Tabor tells how Field swiftly assembled an all-star scientific dream team that included telegraph legend Samuel F. B. Morse; a young Lord Kelvin, called the da Vinci of his day; Michael Faraday, the father of electrical engineering; and legendary philanthropist Peter Cooper. Together they battled epic storms, freak accidents, corporate sabotage, the enmity of Abraham Lincoln, and the hubris of the project's original chief electrician―an eccentric who insisted on being called Wildman―while racing two rival efforts to establish telegraphic communications between continents. When it was finally done, Field's cable lay up to 2.5 miles deep under the ocean, and the London Daily News announced: "Time and space seem literally annihilated." The cable's legacy can be traced today in the hundreds of descendants that still carry 98 percent of the world's information through a "world undersea web."
Deeply researched and written with verve, Lightning Beneath the Sea is the gripping account of an epochal achievement.
"An epic maritime adventure, as well as a riveting study of technological progress... . A captivating saga of Victorians cobbling modernity into existence under the most grueling circumstances." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An engrossing tale, with much relevance to our time... . A lively and electrifying account of the little-remembered 'miracle' that connected continents." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Long before aviators spanned the Atlantic through clouds, electricians linked the old and new worlds on the ocean floor when, in the mid-nineteenth century, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid. In Lightning Beneath the Sea, James M. Tabor takes us into the very depths of this remarkable endeavor. It is a world of sparks, storms, pitch, hubris, and, above all, determination. Tabor reconstructs a great moment of the modern age. It is a time when information can flash, like lightning, between continents, and when a new fabric of human connection begins to form." ―David Rooney, author of The Big Hop
This information about Lightning Beneath the Sea was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James M. Tabor is the author of six books, including the award-winning Forever on the Mountain and bestselling Blind Descent. A creator of the History Channel's Journey to the Center of the World, he has written for Time, Smithsonian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others. He lives in Waitsfield, Vermont.
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