The acclaimed editor of The New York Times Book Review Pamela Paul 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.
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and Politics and Prose Bookstore are pleased to welcome New York Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul for a live-stream discussion on her new book, 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet. Paul will be in conversation with bestselling author Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
This livestream event is free and open to the public, with registration. Book sales are encouraged through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
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.
Remember 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.
About the speakers:
Pamela Paul is the editor of The New York Times Book Review, which she joined as the children's books editor in 2011, and oversees books coverage at The New York Times, where she hosts the weekly Book Review podcast.
She is the author of seven books: ” The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony” was named one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post; her second book, “Pornified,” was named one of the best books of 2005 by The San Francisco Chronicle. She is also the author of “Parenting, Inc.”, “By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from The New York Times Book Review,” “My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues" and most recently, “How to Raise a Reader,” co-written with Maria Russo. Her first picture book for children, "Rectangle Time," came out in February 2021.
Paul's next book, "100 Things We've Lost to the Internet," will be published by Crown on October 26th, 2021 (and can be preordered now!).
Paul has been a contributor to Time magazine and The Economist, and a columnist for The New York Times Sunday Styles section and Worth magazine. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, The Economist, Vogue, and other publications.
You can follow Paul on Twitter @PamelaPaulNYT and on Instagram @PamelaPaul2018.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has also written for GQ, ESPN the Magazine, and many other publications. Fleishman Is in Trouble is her first novel.
