Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by information technology since I was a child–whether in the form of books, libraries, computers, or cell phones! Living through a massive expansion in the volume of data, I believe it is essential to study the long history of information to make sense of our current data-driven times–which is why I became a historian of data, which I teach and write about full time. Here are some of the most informative and insightful books that have helped me make sense of our issues, ranging from information overload and artificial intelligence to privacy and data justice.


I wrote...

The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World

By Asheesh Siddique,

Book cover of The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World

What is my book about?

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms

Asheesh Siddique Why did I love this book?

Finding yourself overwhelmed, confused, or just plain curious about artificial intelligence?

Then this is the book for you! Wiggins and Jones provide a lucid, comprehensive overview of how we arrived at our current data-saturated times and how artificial intelligence emerged from the political climate of the Cold War as one attempt in a longer history of the ties between political power and information.

I found myself constantly surprised and enlightened by the history of data sketched out by Wiggins and Jones!

By Chris Wiggins, Matthew L. Jones,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked How Data Happened as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From facial recognition-capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents-to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.

Expanding on the popular course they created at Columbia University, Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones illuminate the ways in which data has long been used as a tool and a weapon in arguing…


Book cover of The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System

Asheesh Siddique Why did I love this book?

How and why do states keep secrets? Soll provides powerful and, at times, surprising answers to this question by turning to the absolutist governments of early modern Europe, and specifically the administrator Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

As the key minister of state under King Louis XIV, Colbert built a powerful system of information collection and control that, in many ways, anticipated the modern national security state. If you want to make sense of government collection of data and state secrecy today, Soll’s book is a must-read.

By Jacob Soll,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Information Master as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jean-Baptiste Colbert saw governance of the state not as the inherent ability of the king, but as a form of mechanical mastery of subjects such as medieval legal history, physics, navigation, and the price lists of nails, sails, and gunpowder. In The Information Master, Jacob Soll shows how the legacy of Colbert's encyclopedic tradition lies at the very center of the rise of the modern state.

This innovative book argues that Colbert's practice of collecting knowledge originated in Renaissance Italy, where merchants recognized the power to be gained from merging scholarship and trade. By connecting historical literatures-archives, libraries, merchant techniques,…


Book cover of The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain

Asheesh Siddique Why did I love this book?

Today, archives are places where we go to research and learn about the past. But as Popper’s fascinating book shows, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, governments used archives like we use computers and databases today as facilities for storing information they considered immediately relevant to solving political problems.

Just like we use computers today, governments mobilized archives to collect, organize, and redeploy information to advance their specific policy objectives. While the early modern world might seem quite distant from our own, Popper shows us that the problem of using information to exert political power is a very old one.  

By Nicholas Popper,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Specter of the Archive as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An exploration of the proliferation of paper in early modern Britain and its far-reaching effects on politics and society.

We are used to thinking of ourselves as living in a time when more information is more available than ever before. In The Specter of the Archive, Nicholas Popper shows that earlier eras had to grapple with the same problem-how to deal with too much information at their fingertips.

He reveals that early modern Britain was a society newly drowning in paper, a light and durable technology whose spread allowed statesmen to record drafts, memoranda, and other ephemera that might otherwise…


Book cover of Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire

Asheesh Siddique Why did I love this book?

How do citizens learn to accept violence perpetuated by their own governments? Answering this profoundly relevant and timely question lies at the heart of Linstrum’s book–and data lies at the crux of the answer. He shows how, despite massive amounts of data about colonial violence circulating in postwar Britain, British people found ways to accommodate and justify that violence.

This book is a sobering challenge to the belief that better information produces better and more empathetic societies, showing that the connection between knowledge and enlightened behavior is not nearly as straightforward as we may want to believe. 

By Erik Linstrum,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Age of Emergency as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An eye-opening account of how violence was experienced not just on the frontlines of colonial terror but at home in imperial Britain.

When uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world after 1945, Britain responded with overwhelming and brutal force. Although this period has conventionally been dubbed "postwar," it was punctuated by a succession of hard-fought, long-running conflicts that were geographically diffuse, morally ambiguous, and impervious to neat endings or declarations of victory. Ruthless counterinsurgencies in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus rippled through British society, molding a home front defined not by the mass mobilization of resources, but by sentiments…


Book cover of Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting

Asheesh Siddique Why did I love this book?

If you love NPR as much as I do, then this is the book for you! Shepperd tells the fascinating story of how public radio came into being in the US during the mid-twentieth century–and how public radio played a crucial role in defining Americans’ expectations about what they have the right to know about their government’s activities.

If you want to make sense of the historical relationship between democracy and data, then this is the book for you! 

By Josh Shepperd,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shadow of the New Deal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the 2024 BEA Book Award Runner-up in the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Runner-up for the AJHA Book of the Year (American Journalism Historians Association).

Despite uncertain beginnings, public broadcasting emerged as a noncommercial media industry that transformed American culture. Josh Shepperd looks at the people, institutions, and influences behind the media reform movement and clearinghouse the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) in the drive to create what became the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio.

Founded in 1934, the NAEB began as a disorganized collection of undersupported…


Explore my book 😀

The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World

By Asheesh Siddique,

Book cover of The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World

What is my book about?

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces with norms of good governance developed in London. 

As the empire expanded in both the Americas and India, however, this system of political knowledge came to be regarded as inadequate in governing the non-English people who inhabited the lands over which the British asserted sovereignty. This posed a key problem for imperial officials: What kind of knowledge was required to govern an empire populated by a growing number of culturally different people? 

Book cover of How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms
Book cover of The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System
Book cover of The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain

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Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

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Book cover of Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

Lyle Greenfield Author Of Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

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Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward. 

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What is my book about?

We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike. 

My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…

Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

By Lyle Greenfield,

What is this book about?

Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.

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