Monday 24 July 2017

A curiosity

An advertisement for both volumes of the book illustrated left appeared in a recent number of the NYRB, apparently paid for by Amazon.

The scope of the book looked a little ambitious, reminding one of those DVD lecture courses on the history of everything often advertised in the same place. Nevertheless, the subject matter, certainly of the first volume, was of interest, so I thought I would follow it up.

But neither bing nor google managed anything other than the Amazon site itself. The web footprint of 'D. D. Wells' is nowhere to be seen. So who is he? Is he a creature of Amazon or their computer? A collaboration between the Amazon computer and the deep mind people over at Google?

For the moment, I shall pass this opportunity up.

PS: or perhaps it is the master work of some scientifically literate, self-made billionaire, determined to prove that he is not just a wallet. There is precedent for same. And to my mind, unlikely to be a she.

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