| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Jonathan Sterne. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2003. Pp. xvi, 450. Cloth $69.95, paper $22.95.

The history of sound recording has received considerable attention in recent years, but most new works on the subject have embraced a decidedly materialistic perspective on the past. Many have focused on the invention and mass production of modern musical instruments, for example, or the impact of digital recording on the music business. A growing number of studies, however, have explored the complex relationship between sound technology and broad patterns of social and cultural change. Jonathan Sterne's book falls into the latter category, moving beyond the material world to offer a multilayered cultural analysis of the history of sound reproduction. Sterne places the evolution of sound technologies within a set of questions and topics not normally associated with the subject, and shows more clearly that social and cultural conditions shaped the course of sound history. In so doing, he highlights a prominent theme in the history of technology: that technological change is not an all-knowing, omnipotent force in our lives but unfolds within "assemblages" of ideas, institutions, practices, and social and cultural values.

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