Description:Randy Malamud examines the traditions of letters and technical communication, including telegraphs, telephones, faxes, and social media, with a focus on email. He considers why so many users tend to dislike it so strongly, and why it may be imperfect or dysfunctional as a means of communicating, but also he tries to find unappreciated benefits and joys, and describes, at the end, how people may learn to write better email. This cultural history and analysis of email is historical and technological, but is most firmly grounded in the freeplay of a humanistic exploration of email as text, as object, and as aesthetic artifact. The book sometimes ventures far afield from the ubiqitous phenomenon of email to appraise it from a removed and critical vantage point, yet at other times Email becomes almost like an email itself. The sections of the book, inspired by the medium it explores, are organized and labeled in the discourse that Malamud both deconstructs and embraces: Open, Password, Unread, Compose, Subject, Attachment, Send, Inbox, Cc/bcc, Print, Forward, Out of office, Opt out, Delete, Junk, Delivery Failure.