BOMBS, BOOBS & BURGERS

I swung by Penguin Canada yesterday to give a brief presentation on my book to the sales team. These would be the folks who will end up trying to sell it to Chapters, Indigo and other bookstores across the country. They were a nice group of people who come from all walks of life: some worked in bookstores, some came from marketing backgrounds while others were even horse jockeys!

In any event, I picked up Penguin's new Fall 2009/Spring 2010 catalog and it's got some publishing details on my book: the hardcover is scheduled for publication in March 2010 and will go for $32 (subject to change), so start saving up that cash! Here's the catalog blurb (which I did not write):

In this surprising history of technology, Peter Nowak argues that most of the innovations that make modern life modern can be directly traced to one of three aspects of human activity - war, porn and the fast food industry. Following developments in technology from the 1940s to the present, Nowak reveals the links between Barbie and U.S. missile systems, how the porn industry killed Betamax, and why Niue, Polynesia, is the phone-sex capital of the world. He exposes the unexpected origins of many common household items, such as cellphones, microwave ovens and plastic packaging, and raises the disturbing question of where we would be, technologically speaking, without our basest desires.

A broad-interest technology book revealing the surprising roots of the technology around us. For fans of Michael Moore, Eric Schlosser and Thomas Friedman, a book full of who-would-have-thought-it facts. No previous book has considered the combined impact of these three industries.

Sounds cool, huh? I better get to writing the damn thing...