How We Disappear

Both sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly author­i­ta­tive and deeply, mov­ing­ly poet­ic, How We Dis­ap­pear is a reck­on­ing with imper­ma­nence that dou­bles as a les­son in how entropy actu­al­ly func­tions. I don’t mind know­ing that I’m both liv­ing and dying at once if it means I can spend a bit of my time on earth in the com­pa­ny of a mind like Thomas S. Mullaney’s.

“From the per­son­al to the cos­mic, loss and dis­ap­pear­ance give up their ter­rors as Thomas S. Mul­laney ranges with ency­clo­pe­dic eru­di­tion from fos­sils to tax returns, pho­tographs, sono­grams, lan­guage, dig­i­ti­za­tion, and far more in an idio­syn­crat­ic his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy that is also a his­to­ry of His­to­ry, its dreams and its errors.”

“A stun­ning med­i­ta­tion on his­to­ry, mem­o­ry, and loss. Tog­gling between the his­to­ry of infor­ma­tion and the his­to­ry of his father’s life, mov­ing flu­id­ly across the ​‘archives of humankind,’ Thomas S. Mul­laney speaks to us — in one breath — as his­to­ri­an, philoso­pher, and descen­dant, search­ing for mean­ing in the face of loss and the ​‘will to keep on living.’”

“A beau­ti­ful and pro­found­ly mov­ing med­i­ta­tion on mem­o­ry, loss, and about what sur­vives us — and what doesn’t. This is intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry at its most inti­mate: learned, lucid, and deeply personal.”

Unlike any­thing I’ve ever read, this book works through painful mem­o­ries of per­son­al loss as a metaphor for the inevitable trade­off between com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the loss of infor­ma­tion. But what makes this book real­ly spe­cial is Mullaney’s prose, tak­ing the read­er on an exhil­a­rat­ing jour­ney of men­tal time trav­el across vast dis­tances in time and space.