A01=Thomas S. Mullaney
Author_Thomas S. Mullaney
Category=DNC
Category=NH
Category=NHTB
Category=VFJX
claude shannon
data
death
documentation
entropy
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_health-lifestyle
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
family history
father
forthcoming
grief
information technology
information theory
it
memoir
memory
mortality
parent
Product details
- ISBN 9781324020783
- Weight: 302g
- Dimensions: 147 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 23 Jun 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Our lives are collections of information—from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and random artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes. Never is this more evident than in the wake of a parent’s death. Yet from all these elusive, even evanescent, data points, history is written and a future is made. This information is stored on clay tablets and wood pulp; in vinyl grooves, compact discs and magnetic patterns; and relayed over undersea cables and satellite cell networks. But all information decays. Everything that we put “in formation” eventually collapses into randomness.
In this wide–ranging examination of the micro and macro, world–renowned scholar Thomas S. Mullaney reflects on the deaths of his parents, and on how human lives “disappear”. Lyrical and poignant, his erudite, inspiring meditation offers eye–opening insight on the miracle of existence, and on what it means to forge meaning from a chaotic universe.
Thomas S. Mullaney is an award–winning Stanford historian, Guggenheim fellow, and former Kluge Chair in Technology and Society at the Library of Congress. He is the author of four books on Chinese history and technology and lives in Palo Alto, California.
