The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness

"I learned a lot about Alexander Graham Bell from this book because in my mind he was very much associated with the invention of the telephone. I was in Canada a few years ago and found myself in the town where the cable had arrived, and the first transatlantic call was made. It was all quite exciting, but I didn’t know about his relationship to deafness. He was surrounded by people who were deaf: his mother, his wife. It’s a very powerful story of how he went about technologically, politically and personally to enable people who were deaf to communicate through the use of this new contraption. As you’re reading this book, you’re applying the values of the 2020s to events that were no doubt wholly noble when they were being carried out, but with the benefit of hindsight, don’t look quite so great. That’s one of the aspects of the book that I found completely fascinating. He doesn’t come out looking like a hero by the values of our society today. I think that is one of the themes that cuts across all these books, whether it’s time, or place, or subject matter: what values do you take to look through the lens at a particular person’s activities? It’s very easy, with the benefit of where I sit today, to adopt a rather critical eye of what he was up to, and yet, we have to put ourselves back to those times and try to understand the context in which he was trying to help people, no doubt with the best of intentions. I found that very, very interesting. But you’re absolutely right, he doesn’t come out of it looking like a gold-embossed hero. That story is really well told. It’s a wonderfully written book."