Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet

'An engaging reminder that, cyber-Utopianism aside, the Internet is as much a thing of flesh and steel as any industrial-age lumber mill or factory. An excellent introduction to the nuts and bolts of how exactly it all works and a timely antidote to oft-repeated abstractions about "cyberspace" or "cloud computing" Economist

'Makes hard-to-grasp concepts easy to understand, even obvious. The history, in particular, is one of the best and most memorable I have ever read' New Scientist

'A Quixotic and winning book with a knack for bundling packets of data into memorable observations. This valuable book leaves you with its share of unsettling visions, but there are comic ones too' The New York Times

'For a full understanding of the Internet on every level, this book is a must-read' Techzone

'A great, playful, wondrous read' ArsTechnica

'Blum is perhaps the millennial generation's John McPhee, chronicling an arcane journey of deep relevance to everyday life. For non-techies, the book is a very accessible revelation' Forbes

'All too awesome to behold. Andrew Blum's fascinating book demystifies the earthly geography of this most ethereal terra incognita' Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein

'Compelling and profound. You will never open an e-mail in quite the same way again' Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic

'One of our best writers. A compelling story of an altogether new realm where the virtual world meets the physical' Paul Goldberger, New Yorker

'The Internet really IS a series of tubes! Who knew?' David Pogue, The New York Times

Andrew Blum writes about architecture, infrastructure and technology for many publications, including the New Yorker, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Slate and Popular Science. He is a correspondent for Wired, a contributing editor to Metropolis and lives in his hometown of New York City.