Telegram!: Modern History as Told Through More Than 400 Witty, Poignant, and Revealing Telegrams

By Linda Rosenkrantz

There was a time when the sight of a Western Union delivery boy coming up the walk filled Americans with a sense of excitement or trepidation. Between its invention in the mid-nineteenth century and its post-1960s relegation to money transfer and congratulations, the telegraph served as the primary medium for urgent messages.Telegram!collects the most poignant and revealing examples of this earliest form of instant communication. Organized into categories such as "Parents and Children," "Hooray for Hollywood," and "Lincoln in the Telegraph Office," the telegrams range from such moving personal notes as W.C. Fields's wire to his dying friend John Barrymore, "You can't do this to me," to political advice, such as one voter's telegraphed suggestion to President Herbert Hoover: "Vote for Roosevelt and make it unanimous." The communication compiled here also provides a novel and engaging perspective on modern history. Abraham Lincoln virtually conducted the Civil War over the telegraph wires, financial nabobs used them to discuss (and fail to predict) the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression, and Japanese diplomats in Washington sent a flurry of encoded telegrams to Tokyo in the weeks leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This handsome volume blends history, sociology, wit, and creativity as captured and dispatched by the telegram in its golden age.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805071016
• ISBN13: 9780805071016
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A great book to browse through and enjoy.

"?" That was Victor Hugo's telegram to his publisher to inquire about book sales. As sales were brisk, his publisher responded with the following telegram: "!" This kind of funny and unusual material makes TELEGRAM! a perfect book to browse through in the fashion of a coffee table book. Linda Rosenkrantz is an able and witty guide as she leads us through telegrams historic and momentous, and just plain silly. Another favorite: The writer George S. Kaufman attended a production of his play OF THEE I SING. Unimpressed by actor William Gaxton's performance, Kaufman sent Gaxton the following telegram: WATCHING YOUR PERFORMANCE FROM THE LAST ROW. WISH YOU WERE HERE.

MAKES HISTORY COME ALIVE!

I bought my husband, a history buff, this book for Christmas, but I haven't even let him read it! It offers a fresh window into famous people and great events of the past. I love it!

DELIGHTFUL AND ADDICTIVE - PACKED WITH SURPRISING INSIGHTS

This book is on my telephone table and I pick it up every time I pass by. In a pre-email era, the arrival of the Western Union envelope was a cliff hanger. When words were money, the messages were distilled to their bare bones: joy, despair, longing, and witty one upmanship are a few. Most of the telegrams involve familiar celebrities, artists, and historical figures who are suddenly illuminated by this verbal economy. To me, the thrill is not so much historical fact but the surprising insight into the sender. Writers and anyone interested in language usage need this book. This book is addictive.

A fascinating book!

I got this book for my husband, who loves offbeat approaches to history, but when I started to thumb through it, I found that I couldn't put it down. There's lots here for the history buff--running from the Civil War to 9/11 (sympathy wires from Putin and the Pope), but the book is also a wonderful collection of funny, clever, warm, romantic, spiteful and sometimes tragic snippets of prose by great wordsmiths like Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Hemingway, and W.C. Fields. There are things in here that made me laugh out loud and others that brought a whole new perspective to historic events.