Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age

The thrilling story of the nineteenth century's moonshot: An Atlantic-spanning telegraph cable that created the global village and changed the world.

In 1854, the American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the Atlantic. Nothing like it had ever been attempted, and Field knew nothing about electricity, telegraphy, ships, or oceans. But he believed that wiring the world for near-instantaneous communication would bring about peace on Earth. After enduri...