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The compelling story of how the first transatlantic cable was laid, the people who dared, the people who lost, and the people who profited, the book tells the dramatic attempts to cross the Atlantic during the 1850s and 1860s, from the first failed attempts to the project that finally succeeded. An inconceivably audacious attempt to overcome the forces of nature in the name of human progress and technology, the laying of the cable was to change forever our means of communication. The speed with which information could now be transmitted was unprecedented and revolutionised the face of news and the global economy, revolutionised our understanding of electricity and created a new global trade. Gillian Cookson is an industrial historian specialising in the origins of engineering and is a research fellow at Durham University. Full of facts and easy to read, this is a fantastic journey with some excellent diagrams and photographs in the colour plate section. 160pp, paperback.