This book is a first edition, first printing.The author provides a history of the typewriter as a machine. There is also a section on "cut-ups" by Burroughs and Gyson.Review in The Atlantic, April 2007: "Witty and idiosyncratic, this history of typewriting says more than one might think possible about the subject. . . ." Book Description Amazon.com: "The Iron Whim is an intelligent, irreverent, and humorous history of writing culture and technology. It covers the early history and evolution of the typewriter as well as the various attempts over the years to change the keyboard configuration, but it is primarily about the role played by this marvel in the writer's life. Darren Wershler-Henry populates his book with figures as disparate as Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, Franz Kafka, Norman Mailer, Alger Hiss, William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Northrop Frye, David Cronenberg, and David Letterman; the soundtrack ranges from the industrial clatter of a newsroom full of Underwoods to the more muted tapping and hum of the Selectric. Wershler-Henry casts a bemused eye on the odd history of early writing machines, important and unusual typewritten texts, the creation of On the Road, and the exploits of a typewriting cockroach named Archy, numerous monkeys, poets, and even a couple of vampires. He gathers into his narrative typewriter-related rumors and anecdotes (Henry James became so accustomed to dictating his novels to a typist that he required the sound of a randomly operated typewriter even to begin to compose). And by broadening his focus to look at typewriting as a social system as well as the typewriter as a technological form, he examines the fascinating way that the tool has actually shaped the creative processShalom Freedman Amazon.com: This work is about a fascinating subject, especially I suspect to all those who have known the transition, first from the handwriting to the typing , and then from the typing to the word- processor modes of human expression. Wershler- Henry is interested in revealing to us the way the parts of the machine work together, and as he indicates the way to do this is to look at them when they have been discombobulated, when they are taken apart and seen not as the height of progress and invention, but as mere random pieces put together. Even more importantly he tells us his goal in writing this book is " to understand how typewriting shaped and changed not only Literature, but also our culture and sense of ourselves". He ranges over a wide variety of subjects and includes descriptions of how the typewriter influenced the writing lives of some of the great literary masters. He too surveys what the change from the relatively harder - work of typewriting to the smooth more soundless touch of computer keys means for us. His chapters are interestingly titled for example: Typewriting and Dictation, Typewriter Nostalgia, , Typewriting and Speed, Typewriting and Discipline, Writing Blind, Poet's Stave and Bar, Typewriters at War, Typewriting After the Typewriter.He certainly tells us more about 'typewriting' than we who for years stabbed and banged on our favorite instrument could have ever understood of its complexity and significance. Ah for my old Smith- Corona."The first American edition was published by Cornell University Press in 2007. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.