Books by Alex Wright

A young man returns from France to his Ayrshire home in the summer of 1781. He finds employment with a wealthy merchant but he is drawn into intrigue and smuggling and is accused of a murder he didn't commit.

In 1934, Paul Otlet, a Belgian entrepreneur, designed a proto-Internet which he called a reseau mondial- literally, "worldwide web." Today, Otlet and his vision have been all but forgotten, thanks to a series of historical misfortunes, but Alex Wright brings Otlet's extraordinary story back into the light in this fascinating look at the dream of universal knowledge.

Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative about pre-computer age information explosions.