The fascinating history of a writing culture and technology.
"The Iron Whim is an intelligent, irreverent, and humorous history that traces the haphazard trajectory of the typewriter's development and its various evolutionary dead ends.
Darren Wershler-Henry casts amusing light on the tricks of the first typewriter salesmen, important and unusual typewritten texts, the creation of On the Road, and the exploits of a typewriting cockroach named Archy, numerous monkeys, and even a couple of vampires. He turns his keen eye on typewriter-related rumours (does Thomas Mann's daughter really...