Five top books on the telephone

One book on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on the telephone:

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940
by Claude S. Fischer

Now that phones go with us everywhere, it's hard to remember a time when we couldn't just call someone on a whim. Chronicling the early decades of telephone technology, Fischer, a sociology professor at UC-Berkeley, examines how its spread changed our collective way of life long before we all went mobile.

Read about the other books on the list.

Claude S. Fischer's latest book is Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character.

Also see Nicholas Royle's top ten writers on the telephone.

--Marshal Zeringue