Reviews
"... a lively, lavishly illustrated history of this newly revered machine backed by a comprehensive user’s guide ... A clever, illuminating, and irresistible book of typewriter appreciation and a call for 'digital detox' and 'slow communication.'"
"... delightfully illustrated ... packed with fascinating history and photos ... When the sun finally sends out an electromagnetic surge that fries every e-mail message on Earth, we'll wish we'd written our love letters on a Smith-Corona."
"... explains how to find and fix a machine, includes testimonies from writers on the freeing power of tapping out a story on a typewriter, and describes the innovative ways that people are using the typewriter today. ... quite enjoyable for anyone who likes the clack of keys and the ring of the carriage return."
"Polt's account will attract those curious about the changes in technology and social patterns, since this book is really a culture critique masquerading as a history."
Library Journal (starred review)
"Polt's book is lovely and large-format with pictures interspersed among the text, which is itself delightfully hybrid: part history, part philosophy, and part user's manual, complete with labeled images of typewriters and how to use and repair them."
"Polt not only explains how to choose the best typewriter and care for it, but he delves into the history of the machines, the famous people who used them in the past and the people who use them now, from novel writers to people who have typewriter blogs and host Type-In social events."
"... filled with beautiful pictures of typewriters, typewriter repair, typewritten pages, and typewriters in the modern era as a form of resistance to the overarching internet-soaked world to which we have allowed ourselves to become hostage. ... Pictures, history and evolution of the marriage of form and function play out across the pages in a way that, I must confess, makes me tear at the book hungrily like a teenage boy with a girlie mag. "
"Polt produces an engaging and personalized dissertation on the fascination with typewriters ... He does a marvelous job of interpreting the almost sensual interaction with the machine, examining every possible facet that might enlighten his readers."
"Polt’s thoroughly researched and truly engaging book is the Bible of the modern typewriter enthusiast. I won’t say it occupies a place on everyone’s shelf, because we haven’t shelved it yet. It’s on our desks and kitchen tables, usually open, or being carried around in backpacks and purses. We refer to it on the street when we’re gazing at the lovely old typewriter in the antique shop window; we review it on our workbench when we’re adjusting our typing machines."
Frederic S. Durbin, Tor.com
"The Typewriter [resists] efforts to either eliminate it, or subjugate its users to the instrumentalizing imperatives of the Information Regime. And it is indeed those people which constitute the vast bulk of The Typewriter Revolution’s content, the insurgents themselves. ... their stories were a profound encouragement to read."