With computers as the near-universal means of writing documents, we begin to lose our sense of how remarkable typewriters really were. Providing a history of the typewriter, Darren Wershler-Henry notes its role in the careers of Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, Franz Kafka, Norman Mailer, Alger Hiss, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and David Letterman. Wershler-Henry casts a bemused eye on early writing machines, looks at typewriting as a social system, and taps into our nostalgia for a method of communication that has all but vanished.