Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age

by James M. Tabor

The thrilling story of the nineteenth century’s Apollo an Atlantic-spanning telegraph cable that created the global village and changed the world.


In 1854, the American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing like it had ever been attempted. Field knew nothing about telegraphy, electricity, ships, or oceans, and science itself still lacked a universal theory of electricity. But he believed that wiring the world for near-instantaneous communication would bring about peace on Earth. In 1866, after enduring over a decade of global scorn, catastrophic failures, staggering losses, and brushes with death, he would finally lay his great cable, ushering in the global information age. From acclaimed author James M. Tabor, Lightning Beneath the Sea is an unforgettable tale of radical vision, unwavering determination, and triumph against overwhelming odds that transformed life on Earth forever.


In a propulsive narrative, Tabor tells how Field swiftly assembled an all-star scientific dream team that included telegraph legend Samuel F. B. Morse; a young Lord Kelvin, called the da Vinci of his day; Michael Faraday, the father of electrical engineering; and legendary philanthropist Peter Cooper. Together they battled epic storms, freak accidents, corporate sabotage, the enmity of Abraham Lincoln, and the hubris of the project’s original chief electrician—an eccentric who insisted on being called Wildman—while racing two rival efforts to establish telegraphic communications between continents. When it was finally done, Field’s cable lay up to 2.5 miles deep under the ocean, and the London Daily News “Time and space seem literally annihilated.” The cable’s legacy can be traced today in the hundreds of descendants that still carry 98 percent of the world’s information through a “world undersea web.”


Deeply researched and written with verve, Lightning Beneath the Sea is the gripping account of an epochal achievement.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Biography, Audiobook, American History, Business

364 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 9, 2026

About the author

James M. Tabor is the author of six books, including the award-winning Forever on the Mountain and best-selling Blind Descent. A creator of the History Channel’s Journey to the Center of the World, he has written for Time, Smithsonian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others. He lives in Waitsfield, Vermont.

Reviews

[theliterateleprechaun]

3⭐

Curiosity had me reaching for this one to learn more about the Great Transatlantic Telegraph Cable!

Author James M. Tabor’s deeply researched novel highlights the Dream Team involved in this 12-year undertaking, the 4 disastrous failures they experienced, and the visionary behind this historical feat.

Having never heard of Cyrus Field before, I wondered how a man who changed our history so dramatically could disappear so quickly. Field always believed that he could usher in a new age of world peace with this linking cable…if he could only see what he’s achieved!

I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting this type of read and I skipped many sections that didn’t hold my interest. I’ll still thinking about the author’s claim that 98% of our information travels on 600 direct descendants of Field’s first cable. I’m left with the reminder that we never know how long and how far the ripples of our influence are felt.

If you are looking for a meatier read, an in-depth look at this undertaking, this book is for you!

I was gifted this copy and was under no obligation to provide a review.

[Arnold]

Super compelling and readable history of the first Atlantic telegraph cable and the man behind it, Cyrus Field. The facts of the events are fascinating themselves, but the author does a great job giving it a narrative-nonfiction-ish presentation. There are places where he has to speculate about people’s actions or motivations due to gaps in the historical record, but those are clearly marked as such, so I didn’t mind. It’s mindblowing that all this happened in the 1860s. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t easy!

[Lachlan Finlayson]

I am grateful to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoy books about overlooked or under-appreciated aspects of history. Great achievements by those famous or at least well-known in their time. Today they are mostly forgotten, over-shadowed by others. or for whatever reason their achievements little acknowledged. This book is about one of those people. The world knows who was the first to do many things: climb the highest mountain, communicate using a telephone, fly across the Atlantic, walk on the moon. We don’t know how history with treat high-achievers of today, particular those founders and leaders of technology companies. Undoubtable these titans of science and technology have achieved much; but they did not do it alone. The wonderful quote:

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants…”

is as relevant today as it was when said by Isaac Newton in 1675 ( although with much earlier medieval roots).

One whose shoulders are stood on by today’s technology greats today is Cyrus Field. The man who is responsible for laying a subsea cable from the Old World to the New World, allowing fast communications in a time when a letter from Europe to the Americas took weeks by sea. Today’s generation of undersea cables, albeit now using fibre-optic technology, carry the vast majority of the data that travels around the world, with the small remainder transmitted by satellite. Technology companies spend billions on these cables, as do military and intelligence establishments. Yet, the pioneer of this technology is all but forgotten today. This book is his story. His name should be better known. This is a fine book that I thoroughly enjoyed and will be recommending to many.

The book begins by describing the magnitude of the challenge facing Field. Land-based telegraph systems were commonplace. Europe has telegraph systems, including short sections under shallow bodies of water. To traverse the Atlantic Ocean, for example from Ireland to Newfoundland is some two thousand miles. A seabed communication cable would connect land-based networks on either side of the Atlantic. Such a cable would need to lie on the deep ocean floor, an environment then unknown and mysterious. An environment of extremely high pressure, very low temperature, unknown topography and little known ocean currents. Constructing a cable, not only to convey an electrical signal, but also to withstand these conditions was a huge challenge. Field also needed to find a ship capable of laying the cable; slowly, carefully in unpredictable Atlantic seas. He found one, a new-build with an engine for propulsion instead of sails. And he needed a man capable of captaining such a ship. Somehow, over a decade of technical failure, financial problems, company disunity and numerous other challenges, Field perseveres. The author asks why did Field keep going for over a decade when many others would have given up ? He suggests:

“The best way to understand Field's fame may be through his faith.
He was the deeply devout son of a famous minister. God had been like a member of his family when he was growing up…”

To achieve success, Field, who made his fortune in the paper business, would need to assemble a scientific and engineering ‘dream team’ arguably unmatched by any such group before or since. Names that are far better known today than Field himself, indeed world famous, respected, immortalised. Kelvin, Faraday, Morse, Brunel to name a few. Field was a stranger to the world these men inhabited, but his vision seemed to resonate, he seemed to attract kindred spirits. The author takes the time to recount how Field managed to keep his all-star team of overachievers moving in the same directions. Not all but most of them !

Beyond the technical challenges, Field had to address numerous financial and political challenges, engaging with leaders at the highest echelons of government and business in the United States and Great Britain. Interestingly by the time Field achieved success his team of experts and financial backers were largely British. During his quest, his name became well-known to numerous US Presidents, Great British Prime Ministers and one long-reigning Queen.

The author presents an astonishing tale of achievements, driven by a man with little technical knowledge but with abundant ambition, tenacity and resilience. Skills required to organise his team and convince the powers-that-be of the benefits of his vision. Financial and military benefits with also a higher aspiration; one nevertheless genuine. Field and some of his backers sincerely believed that wiring the world would usher in a new age of peace through communication and prosperity. I think the author provides a compelling viewpoint as he reflects on Field’s vision.

“In hindsight this conviction may appear fanciful and outlandish, and perhaps as a result, it has been largely overlooked by history. But just as much as science and engineering and profit, that other motive—peace on earth—is crucial to any understanding of Field's achievement.”

It is easy to scoff at such a humanitarian objective, but early in the US Civil War, Great Britain came close to becoming an active participant. President Lincoln remarked to his Secretary of State. “…one war at a time”. The Times of London got it exactly right when it declared:

”We nearly went to war with America because we had not a telegraph across the Atlantic."

After the Introduction, which draws the reader into the extent of this momentous undertaking, the author returns to earlier times for Field. A man who has made his fortune in unrelated business activity and retired at the age of 35 in New York in the 1850s. Wealthy, but missing the excitement and risk of the business world. The author also provides context of the mid-19th century geo-political world and why transoceanic undersea cable might be worth pursuing. Interestingly the impetus to a large extent comes from Great Britain, in those day an empire with colonies and influence on a global scale. The United States was inward-looking, its vast territory still being developed, including a land based telegraph network.

The author leads us through how Field founds a new company for his venture and sets about to build his team, a gathering of some of the finest minds of the day. A who’s-who of late 19th Century gifted, great and powerful men. Scientists and engineers. Isambard Kingdom Brunel provided knowledge of engineering major projects, including shipping and a unique vessel that had the potential to carry and deploy an oceanic cable. Lord Kelvin, later knighted for his role in the project, plays a role with his knowledge of electricity, a science in its infancy. Samuel Morse is an early participant, a colourful character, skilled, foremost in telegraphy. Michael Faraday, the father of electrical engineer was involved, as was Matthew Fontaine Maury, the leading expert in oceanography. All key players without whom it is unlikely Field would have been successful.

The author explains the many issues Field and his team addressed. Solutions to problems of sciences that were at the time unknown or in their infancy. Fascinating stories of discovery, invention and innovation. organisation, courage, strength and determination. The adjectives just keep coming ! Battling not just the physical world, but also government bureaucracy, business competitors, pessimists and naysayers.

Field initially has some success with small-scale undersea cable laying in Newfoundland.
What then followed was the far more ambitious attempt to lay a functioning and reliable Atlantic Ocean subsea cable. This is the heart of the book, a multi-faceted tale of company building, science, technology, publicity and finance. Over many years, Field experiences limited success, unmitigated failure, revival, rehabilitation and finally after a decade of trying, finally a functional and reliable communication system between Europe and the United States. The people present who carried out this work, from manual labourers to esteemed scientists , all who had endured discomfort and risked their lives at sea, understood the magnitude of what they had done.

“Every man among them fully understood that he was present at one of the great events of history. The power of that dissolved barriers of nationality and prejudices of class…(they)…felt their hearts touched in ways they never had been and never would be again…”

The author captures the human feelings expressed in numerous written accounts by the participants. Utmost seemed to be joy and pride in their achievement. And perhaps for Field, a somewhat modest man, quiet satisfaction and well-needed relief. After the initial test transmissions across the Atlantic came historic messages. From Queen Victoria to the President of the United States:

“The Queen congratulates the President on the successful completion of an undertaking which she hopes may serve as an additional bond of union between the United States and England.”

President Andrew Johnson replied from the White House:

“The President of the United States acknowledges with profound gratification the receipt of Her Majesty's dispatch, and cordially reciprocates the hope that the cable that now unites the Eastern and the Western hemispheres may serve to strengthen and perpetuate peace and amity between the Government of England and the Republic of the United States.”

At the centre of the story is a man with undoubted qualities, but also flaws. By the standards of today, a poor father and distant husband. Selfish, obsessed, arrogant, slightly deluded but nevertheless a visionary, who managed to realise his dream. The author doesn’t dwell on these unbecoming aspects, but presents the historical facts and allows the reader to draw their own conclusion.

The aftermath in some way explains why the name Field is largely unknown today. The book concludes with a bitter-sweet Epilogue. He payed off all his debts, as he had twice before in his business life and goes on to live for another quarter-century. The author remarks on his legacy:

“Unlike many great innovators of his age—Watt, Morse, Bell, Edison, and others—Field died not just poor but almost penniless. History is written by the winners…and the great winners of history tend to be rich. Such people leave their names on universities, museums, hospitals, foundations, statues, memorials”

This is a fine book. A compelling adventure of science, finance, politics and the natural world of remote seas and an unknown deep-ocean seafloor. Also a wonderful analysis on what makes a man, already wealthy and respected, undertake such an adventure. What keeps him going for over a decade, and what happens next. One cannot help but wonder about today’s equivalents. People of great vision, undoubted skill and destiny; but how do they compare with Cyrus Field, a man whose name they may not even know. I wish the publishers and author the very best success with this book.

[Nolan]

This glittered with five stars on every page. I’ve rarely read a project’s history that was so easy to understand and so perfectly paced that it kept me saying, “I have time for one more chapter,” until hours had passed. I was stunned when it ended so quickly. The chapters are shorter than I expected, but that never made me feel Tabor was dumbing the material down. I never found a stretch that sagged, grew overly dense, or drifted out of focus. I can’t remember when a piece of history engaged me this completely, and Tabor’s writing talent deserves most of the credit.

Tabor earned that trust before this book. Readers who know Blind Descent or Forever on the Mountain will recognize the same narrative historian: he can make a technical ordeal feel like an adventure without sanding off the science. He opens in the middle of a near-fatal Atlantic storm, then works backward and forward in short chapters that keep snapping shut on cliffhangers. You always want the next one, and then there suddenly aren’t any more.

Most people who read five books a year or less have at least a vague sense of who Eli Whitney was and why he mattered. Most can tenuously link Henry Ford with the cars that still carry his last name. Casual students of aviation connect Charles Lindbergh with aviation. Tragically, almost no one knows anything about Cyrus Field. The same people who post reviews, doomscroll, and spend hours sparring with an AI have no idea that Field stands resolutely at the gates of the information age, probably saddened by the cacophony of dissonant perspectives flying into and out of our devices. I suspect the average American believes his or her connection to the Internet is largely wireless, or happens courtesy of satellites. Read this book and you’ll discover that 98 percent of the digital communication you and I engage in still relies on cables. Those lines are the direct descendants of Field’s telegraph. They still sit on the ocean floor, and they remain geopolitical chokepoints. Governments and companies spend billions laying new ones, and a cut cable can isolate a region faster than most of us like to think about while we tap and scroll.

Cyrus Field, a Massachusetts native, left home at 15 to seek his fortune and found it in paper. He made enough selling paper that he could retire in his thirties and live well. Standing still and resting on his laurels was no way to live, so he went looking for a project he could believe in and work until it succeeded. In his day, people knew him as the man who spearheaded the successful undersea telegraph link between the United States and Europe. This book is the riveting story of how Field and his dream team snaked cables thousands of miles across the ocean at depths that applied six thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. Tabor makes that depth feel physical. He compares the stress on the cable to a large SUV balanced on a domino. That pressure was still nothing like the pressure Field endured every time he failed. His failures were all too public, and from his perspective there were way too many of them. That’s the element of this book that will stay with me years from now—how one man could endure repeated colossal failures, keep his outward confidence, and press on toward eventual victory.

This is a guy I’d want my younger grandchildren to read about. He personified the old Japanese proverb “fall seven, rise eight.” Best of all, he never cut corners on his honesty with other people, and he never lost faith in the God who felt like a constant companion throughout his life.

Field began thinking seriously about telegraphy when he met Frederic Newton Gisborne, a Brit who wanted to build a communications network between St. John’s and Cape Ray in Newfoundland and between Cape Ray and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Gisborne planned to shave forty-eight hours off the time it took information to travel from New York to London. The first leg used telegraph wires; the second used carrier pigeons and steamers.

That conversation sent Field back to a startling fact. In 1843 the United States had no telegraph lines. By 1854 there were 89 lines comprising 23,261 miles of wire. It was an unregulated wild west where lawsuits were plentiful and money practically grew on trees if you knew how to make that happen.

Field wanted to make money, but he also wanted to promote world peace with whatever transatlantic connectivity he could achieve. He knew nothing about running subsea telegraph lines, so he found someone who understood the ocean floor. Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury was 43 when he met Field. As director of the Naval Observatory, Maury had already mapped stretches of the seafloor, and people in his day considered him the father of oceanography. He could help Field plan a cable route between Newfoundland and Ireland—much closer points than New York and London. Mapping the ocean wouldn’t be enough. To raise money, Field needed a telegraphy expert, and he found one in Samuel F. B. Morse, long recognized as the father of telegraphy. The two would eventually go their separate ways, but Morse was integral to Field’s early fundraising. On the American side Field turned to railroad magnate Peter Cooper. Cooper could have turned him away easily, but Field’s honesty and appetite for risk inspired him. Cooper understood that impulse. He had the same affinity for the seemingly unachievable. Tabor also draws Michael Faraday into this scientific circle. Faraday wasn’t hauling cable across the North Atlantic, but his work on electricity and on gutta-percha as an insulator helped explain how a signal might survive inside a wire drowned in seawater.

Field expanded his cable cabinet over time. In 1850 the Brett brothers, John and Jacob, laid the first suboceanic cable across the English Channel. That cable used copper wire insulated with gutta-percha, a plant-based, plastic-like substance taken from trees native to Malaysia and Indonesia. Field’s eventual success would rely on gutta-percha as the primary insulator. British engineer Samuel Canning knew how to create the cable Field needed, and the two came together to build it.

Field’s first attempts to lay cable became his first public failure. Tabor writes this history so well that your own heart grows heavy as the project collapses. Field recognized that he needed someone who specialized in electrical flow—an electrician, in today’s terms. He found Wildman Whitehouse, a former surgeon turned electrician. Two of Field’s associates pushed for Whitehouse’s inclusion, but Tabor portrays the man as a walking disaster who diverted funds to needless, inaccurate devices instead of better ways to measure undersea cable. When the 1858 line began to fade, Whitehouse tried to bully the signal through with huge jolts of voltage. That “cure” helped kill the cable he was supposed to save.

While traveling to London by rail, Field met the eccentric engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. On that train ride they compared notes on everything from cable construction to shipbuilding. Brunel showed Field his latest ship under construction, the Great Eastern, and offered it as a way to carry the miles of cable Field would need. That leviathan could hold an entire ocean-spanning coil in her hull, which earlier ships could not. In 1865 she still lost the cable to the depths. The next year the same ship returned, grappled for the lost line, spliced it, and helped turn a famous failure into a working pair of cables.

University of Glasgow professor William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin and creator of the absolute temperature scale, also joined the effort. According to Tabor, Thomson laid the groundwork for practical electric lighting and more. His instruments and his caution about electrical force stand in pointed contrast to Whitehouse’s brute-force approach.

Tabor writes so well that you stand beside Field in the awful irony of a speech honoring his achievements while he already knew the 1858 cable was dying and would probably fail altogether. That first fleeting triumph had its own historic exchange: Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan sent congratulations across the water, and even that “instant” message took many hours to crawl through a wounded line. The cable went dead within weeks. The lasting victory came in 1866, when Victoria and President Andrew Johnson could finally communicate across a connection that held.

Before Field succeeded, news, markets, and diplomacy moved no faster than a steamship. A message from New York to London could take two weeks one way, and a reply could eat a month. Families learned of illness and death long after the fact. After 1866, those same continents could talk in minutes. Time and space, as one London paper put it, seemed literally annihilated.

While Americans fought the Civil War, Field fought personal wars of his own: the depletion of his fortune and the disgruntlement of Samuel Morse, who turned against him. He also watched formidable competition gather at Western Union, whose representatives insisted they could run cable across the Bering Strait from Russia through what is now Alaska and into Canada, where their wire would meet existing lines. Field failed four times before he finally laid a cable that consistently worked in 1866. Tabor tells that success brilliantly, and I felt palpable relief when the line held and the heads of state could use it.

Tabor strikes the perfect balance between detailed history and a human face on the challenges and successes. He points out where existing records aren’t clear, and small admissions like that boosted my confidence in the history.

I found the book on Bookshare and read it with an ElevenReader voice labeled Pro Narrator. It’s a magnificent male voice, perfect for nonfiction of every kind, and it’s my go-to for books like this. The combination of Tabor’s pacing and that narration made the storms, boardrooms, and quiet human stubbornness easy to stay with for hours.

You don’t need to be a telegraphy expert, an electrical engineer, or a materials aficionado to appreciate this book. Be prepared to be swept away by the story of a man whose faith and personal honesty ultimately buoyed his success.

Tabor postulates that Field is virtually unknown today because he died penniless. He had no money left to affix his name to university science centers, hospitals, or schools. Unfortunately for those of us living in a time when heroes seem in short supply, Field’s anonymity is something we can ill afford. I’m grateful to Tabor for doing his part to reintroduce the almost-unknown Field to those of us who obliviously scroll and tap our way through the day.

[Brendan (History Nerds United)]

I hate science (and engineering!). Mostly, it is because I'm not smart enough to understand it the vast majority of the time. So, I decided to read Lightning Beneath the Sea by James Tabor for two reasons. First, that is just a killer title. Second, the blue on the cover truly mesmerized me. I hoped that those two things might get me engaged enough to enjoy it.

As usual, I am a ridiculous person because Tabor's book is absolutely fantastic without the cover or the title. He tells the story of Cyrus Field. Oh, you never heard of him? That would be the point. A lot of people have not, including yours truly. There are various reasons why his name slipped from history, but I can tell you it is not because he led a boring life. I will avoid spoilers, but this book follows his attempts (yes, plural) to place a telegraph wire across the Atlantic Ocean. It still sounds insane even now.

Tabor completely understands the assignment. He keeps the narrative moving at a brisk pace. He focuses on the people and uses the science as the challenge to these people. There are triumphs, failures, backstabs, ocean storms, and everything else you can think of. Tabor even explained the science/engineering well enough that even I (mostly) understood it. If that's not enough of a recommendation, I'm not sure what else I could say. I'd recommend this one to anyone looking for a great story.

(This book was provided as a review copy by W. W. Norton.)

[Miranda]

Ever since I read Susan Casey’s The Underworld, I’ve been searching for that high. A book that is full of interesting information, larger than life characters, and a high stakes true story. Lightning Beneath The Sea appeared to be a follow on in that tradition. It did have all three of those things, and I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t quite achieve the same greatness that Casey did.

Lightning Beneath the Sea tells the story of Cyrus Field, an American Businessman who, after a chance meeting, became obsessed with laying the first transatlantic submarine cable. It took him over a decade, most of his considerable fortune, and four tries.

There are a lot of bits of the story that are hang on the edge of your seat, and some of the characters (Wildman Whitehouse) are indeed larger than life, but the author devotes the same care and attention to Field’s many trips across the Atlantic, and other minutiae that are more historically relevant than narratively compelling, which makes the pacing stop and go, and prevents this book from being a truly riveting read. If you are already interested in this history, you’ll likely enjoy this book, but I’m not sure it will make a convert out of an ambivalent reader.

I received an advance copy in exchange for this honest review.

[David Wurster]

Among other things, this book is a reminder that for almost all of human history regions of the world existing without up-to-date knowledge of what was going on in distant parts. It made wars harder to fight and harder to end. Today, financial players take advantage of getting information tiny increments of a second faster than their rivals. Prior to the transatlantic cable, information flowed between the continents in weeks or months depending on the weather in the north Atlantic.
Tabor is good at conveying the difficulty of laying cable and the environmental and other threats to the cable in the depths of the sea. I found it interesting to learn that knowledge of electricity was so limited and wrong in many ways, yet the economic benefits of the connection drove the existence of the underseas cable despite the lack of technical understanding.
It is also interesting that the threat of sabotage to the cable is still with us 150 years later. Technology has certainly improved but human nature has not.

[Amy Kniss]

Lightning Beneath the Sea tells a more engaging story than I expected. Cyrus Field deserves more recognition for the role he played in connecting England and North America and changing how quickly news could travel. The cable did not create the internet, but it made instantaneous global communication possible.

Field raised millions, put his own fortune on the line, and persisted through four failed attempts to lay a cable across the Atlantic. The fifth voyage finally worked. Captain James Anderson agreed to lead the expedition on the Great Eastern, the only ship capable of carrying the 32 tons of cable, only if the financiers allowed Field to remain in charge. They completed the mission in 1866.

Field’s insane determination and ability to get funding despite failure after failure, costing at least 60M in today’s dollars,is the heart of the book. After all that, he died with little money and relied on friends for support.

[Steve]

Fascinating story

I think the book had a number of very strong points. The biographies were vivid, bringing the characters to life. I liked the conversational tone of the book and how Tabor was able to communicate his enthusiasm for the subject matter. He actually made a book about an undersea cable fascinating and difficult to put down. I thought that the list of characters up front was very useful and the visuals were great. Translating money from historical values to today’s was very helpful. I did find however, at times, too much detail. However, I enjoyed the book and these did not affect my rating. Thank you to Edelweiss and W. W. Norton for the digital review copy.

[Bill Walker]

a very good read

This is a narrative of propelling action capturing the adventure of laying the first transatlantic cable. The outsized personalities are themselves a fascinating lot. The challenges they faced were beyond daunting as they literally had to make up technologies and techniques on the fly. Occasionally more details than necessary. But even in retrospect it’s hard to credit the ambition and determination of Cyrus Field and his colleagues to make this leap of faith.

[Robert Nduati]

Insightful look at the kind of ambition that does great things to overcome business, political, and personal challenges while working on the fringes of the day’s technology. I like how the author lets both the good and bad qualities of Cyrus Field speak for themselves through consequences. The details of the cables and the logistics around them made some parts slow to read but they only heighten the satisfaction of the payoff in the last chapter.

[Jenny]

This book reminds us that even though we imagine all of our data in the metaphorical "cloud," about 98% of internet traffic passes through underseas cables. This is the story of a 19th Century man, Cyrus Field, who had a vision for improved transatlantic communication, and who pursued it despite setback after setback.

[Lori.Willeybereps.Com]

Listened on Audible. Reader was fine but a little dry. Subject was extremely interesting as, once again I was reminded of how much we take for granted in our daily life at the expense of people(precursors of Elon Musk types) who had vision, resources, and just refused to accept failure as an option.

[Daniel Farabaugh]

A solid and interesting account of the multiple attempts to lay the undersea cable. I had really only known about two attempts, so this really broadened out my understanding. Solid well written history.

[Hugh Heinsohn]

A ripping read. Incredible story, well told. Concise without skipping anything important. Well worth reading for anyone interested in communications, the Industrial Revolution, project management, or business.

[Nicole]

2.75

[BW]

Great story! Well researched and well told!

[Bill Greenhaw]

An interesting though challenging read, sometimes tedious. Would benefit from editing superfluous, almost inane passages.

[Louis Prontnicki]

A very well written account of a largely forgotten drama. The author does an excellent job of riveting your attention throughout the book. I had a hard time stopping!

[Joanna]

This was a well-done popular history about a topic I barely knew, just the subject ended up being a little less exciting than I was imagining going into it.

[David]

3.75 ⭐️

[Morts.]

4.5*

[Andrew W]

Like reading Ron Chernow. Moves as a story of personalities.

[Michael]

Interesting but a slog