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Simon Winchester | a History of Precision Engineering and the Making of the Modern World

Hidden Forces

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The Importance of Nonfiction Books

I wrote a book about the eruption of the volcano Cracker Tower in 1883. I believe it was the first major news event in the world that was known about all over the world within minutes of it occurring. People were sitting in their horse-drawn carriages going to work and reading about places they'd never heard of, Java, Sumatra, Cracker Tower. The message saying Cracker Tower erupted, many dead, was on the desk of the London Times four minutes later.

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