If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

(Hardback, Large Print Edition)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Longlisted - National Book Award (Nonfiction)
Best Books of 2020 - Financial Times
Best Books of Fall 2020: O, The Oprah Magazine, The Observer, Boston.com
Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2020: TIME

A revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller These Truths.

Reviews

Lepore is a brilliant and prolific historian with an eye for unusual and revealing stories, and this one is a remarkable saga, sometimes comical, sometimes ominous: a "shadow history of the 1960s," as she writes.... Lepore finds in it a plausible untold origin story for our current panopticon: a world of constant surveillance, if not by the state then by megacorporations that make vast fortunes by predicting and manipulating our behavior--including, most insidiously, our behavior as voters.... It didn't have to be this way. That is Lepore's final message: history is not inevitable.--James Gleick
[A] rich account. . . . Lepore's exceptional skill as storyteller and her sharp eye for seemingly quotidian details and small coincidences lend the Simulmatics world an intimate--and at times deliciously gossipy--feeling. . . . As Lepore notes, after the 1960 Kennedy election, the idea that politicians might use advertising, psychological tricks, or even new technology in order to sway elections in their favor was still shocking to the public. But 60 years later, it's such an accepted part of American political life that it takes a historian to excavate the moment in time where such notions began to cohere.--J.C. Pan
A beautifully written and intellectually rigorous account of the origins of the science of predictive analytics and behavioral data science in the cold war era.
Timely.... Lepore weaves her narrative across continents and through time with engaging, conversational prose. Her characters' personalities, families, affairs, fights and constant gossiping come alive, thanks to extensive troves of family papers and interviews with those closest to them.--Shannon Bond
A person can't help but feel inspired by the riveting intelligence and joyful curiosity of Jill Lepore. Knowing that there is a mind like hers in the world is a hope-inducing thing.--George Saunders
[Lepore] pulls no punches in criticizing the folly of trying to understand human behavior via algorithm, and the corrosive consequences of trying to hack democracy. The result is . . . a perceptive work of historically informed dissent.--Brendan Driscoll, Booklist [starred review]
Data science, Jill Lepore reminds us in this brilliant book, has a past, and she tells it through the engrossing story of Simulmatics, the tiny, long-forgotten company that helped invent our data-obsessed world, in which prediction is seemingly the only knowledge that matters. A captivating, deeply incisive work.--Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
In another fast-paced narrative, Jill Lepore brilliantly uncovers the history of the Simulmatics Corporation, which launched the volatile mix of computing, politics, and personal behavior that now divides our nation, feeds on private information, and weakens the strength of our democratic institutions.--Julian E. Zelizer, author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party