Brunton (NYU) enriched his doctoral dissertation to produce a well-crafted, masterfully researched, and engaging scholarly history of Internet spam. He defines spam as "the use of information technology infrastructure to exploit [or waste] existing aggregations of human attention." Something is not spam when it "respects our attention and the finite span of our lives expended at the screen." Such statements warrant close reflection as people experience the Internet and its various expressions: the web, e-mail, search engines, and social networks. Spam entered the Internet lexicon early; the word "spam" was repeated across screens of primitive computers to wipe away user text, a running gag and tribute to a 1970 Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch. The first major use of spam occurred on April 12, 1994, when 6,000 Usenet newsgroup participants received an advertisement marketing legal services for a green card lottery; retribution came quickly in the guise of a distributed denial-of-service attack on the lawyer's phone, fax, and network connections. Today, automated spam bots are largely orchestrated by organized crime; some spam bots even masquerade as blogs, and justice is ludicrous--sources are untraceable. Overall, a thought-provoking discussion of a topic that should interest all Internet users. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. M. Mounts Dartmouth College