The fascinating history of a writing culture and technology. "The Iron Whim" is an intelligent, irreverent, and humorous history that traces the haphazard trajectory of the typewriter's development and its various evolutionary dead ends. Darren Wershler-Henry casts amusing light on the tricks of the first typewriter salesmen, important and unusual typewritten texts, the creation of On the Road, and the exploits of a typewriting cockroach named Archy, numerous monkeys, and even a couple of vampires. He turns his keen eye on typewriter-related rumours (does Thomas Mann's daughter really live on Canada's east coast with two golden retrievers who type on a machine built specifically for their use?) and anecdotes (Henry James became so accustomed to dictating his novels to a typist that he required the sound of a randomly operated typewriter even to begin to compose). And by broadening his focus to look at typewriting as well as the typewriter, he examines the fascinating way that the tool has actually shaped the creative process. With engaging subject matter that ranges over two hundred years of literature and culture in English, "The Iron Whim "builds on recent interest in books about familiar objects and taps into our nostalgia for a method of communicating that has all but vanished.