The Information is a book about the history of information theory, like The Ascent of Information (which I just finished reading). Instead of focusing on the palpable weight of bits as Caleb Scharf does, James Gleick discusses the path to discovering them. This book is a tour of the great work in mathematics, physics, and biology that led to Claude Shannon’s article “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, and the work that followed from it.

The more I learn about information theory, the more it fascinates me. It connects so many different fields. It offers ways to define complexity in math, explains Maxwell’s demon in physics, and describes genes in biology. There’s applications everywhere.