This book is excellent and the informative. The stregnth of this book is also its greatest weakness -- the author's errudition. I liked the way that he marshaled historical facts and etymology in his account. But I did not like the way that he would bring up, for example, some arcane point from evolutionary biology. My own biased feeling is that the references to biology are a feeble attempt to valorize (via reference to myth) the dismal prospect of the panopticon society he describes.

The writer thoroughly researched his work. He studied how technology affects organizations and how crisis of information come into play when dealing with mass markets and new technologies. This is a must read work.

Beniger has published two sole-authored books. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Harvard University Press, 1986) gained a full-page review (with brief biography) in the New York Times Book Review and the lead review (and cover illustration) in the special book review edition of Science, journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Now in its third printing, The Control Revolution won the eleventh annual Association of American Publishers award for "the most outstanding book in the social and behavioral sciences" and the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award; the 1989 softcover edition was selected by the New York Times Book Review as a "Notable Paperback of the Year." Recently Harvard University Press announced contracts to publish The Control Revolution in two additional languages: in Italian by UTET Libreria, an Italian book publisher, by December 1995; and in Mandarin Chinese by Laureate, a U.S. book publisher specialized in foreign translations for export, by May 1996.