It has been a long time coming, but Empire of the Sum will be published in the UK and other non-US countries this coming Friday, the 6th of October. To celebrate, non-US readers finally have a chance to win one of two free copies of the book! To enter, leave a comment on this post with a valid email address so that I can contact you in the event that you win.
Congratulations to Robert Oesterreich and Fred Grant, winners of the second round of the Empire of the Sum giveaway! Their names were picked at random from the set of all entrants who replied to the original post about the competition.
Congratulations to Mary Ann Atwood and John W. Stuart, winners of the first round of the Empire of the Sum giveaway! Their names were picked at random from the set of all entrants who replied the original post about the competition. Thank you all for entering! If you won, congratulations, and look out for an email from me arranging delivery of your copy of Empire. If not, read on.
I had a lot of fun a few months back recording an interview with Dallas Campbell on the subject of book history for his podcast, Patented. At least someone else must have enjoyed it too, because Dallas invited me back for another episode, this time on digital calculators. Have a listen and let me know what you think!
If you’d like to get a flavour of Empire of the Sum, check out this extract in Lapham’s Quarterly! It’s taken from the first chapter of the book, and, spoiler alert, it has nothing to do with the image (above) they’ve chosen to illustrate it — although Hollerith’s machines do make an appearance later in the book, and, coincidentally enough, I wrote about them a few years back in the context of the Monotype machine. Everything old is new again!