What do you think?
Rate this book
The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art
An irresistible and enchanting journey through human history—from mankind’s earliest fires to the latest smart phones—that tells the surprising and untold story of storytelling.
Joan Didion told us, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And yet, the story of stories has never been told until now. MIT technology pioneer Kevin Ashton was at the forefront of the digital revolution that led to the invention of the smartphone, the ultimate storytelling device. This latest technology in the long arc of human storytelling allows anyone, for the first time in history, to tell stories to everyone. In The Story of Stories, Ashton tells the untold story of storytelling. The result is an eye-opening, compelling journey through the eight great revolutions of storytelling, all of which follow a simple each major new storytelling tool increases the number of people who can share stories and the number of people with whom those stories can be shared.
Our first night-fires created the earliest audiences for spoken stories. Language did not lead us to stories; stories led us to language. In time, the development of rhyme, song, and other mnemonic devices allowed those spoken stories to be preserved for generations; pictures drawn on cave walls turned preservation into permanence, telling stories we still experience thousands of years later; writing enabled storytellers to spread tales to faraway places; the Chinese invented printing with moveable metal type around 700 CE; the Toltecs independently invented it at about the same time; 750 years later Gutenberg independently invented it again, adding a converted wine press to create the mass production of mass communication. Over time, printing presses increased the number of storytellers and the size of their audiences by many orders of magnitude, a trend which led us to great revolutions, and electric, then electronic, then digital storytelling and all our storytelling tools of today—and tomorrow’s.
In this remarkable book, more than twenty-five years in the making, Ashton looks at the development of human storytelling to help us understand where we are in the latest iteration that is the digital era. Drawing on examples from art, literature, music, and pop culture, from the Bible to Bon Jovi, Aristotle to Artificial Intelligence, Frederick Douglass to Facebook, and cave paintings to cinema, The Story of Stories is a passionate and crucial exploration of how stories and the tools we use to tell them continue to change us, cause revolutions, and connect us to each other and give our lives meaning.
Joan Didion told us, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And yet, the story of stories has never been told until now. MIT technology pioneer Kevin Ashton was at the forefront of the digital revolution that led to the invention of the smartphone, the ultimate storytelling device. This latest technology in the long arc of human storytelling allows anyone, for the first time in history, to tell stories to everyone. In The Story of Stories, Ashton tells the untold story of storytelling. The result is an eye-opening, compelling journey through the eight great revolutions of storytelling, all of which follow a simple each major new storytelling tool increases the number of people who can share stories and the number of people with whom those stories can be shared.
Our first night-fires created the earliest audiences for spoken stories. Language did not lead us to stories; stories led us to language. In time, the development of rhyme, song, and other mnemonic devices allowed those spoken stories to be preserved for generations; pictures drawn on cave walls turned preservation into permanence, telling stories we still experience thousands of years later; writing enabled storytellers to spread tales to faraway places; the Chinese invented printing with moveable metal type around 700 CE; the Toltecs independently invented it at about the same time; 750 years later Gutenberg independently invented it again, adding a converted wine press to create the mass production of mass communication. Over time, printing presses increased the number of storytellers and the size of their audiences by many orders of magnitude, a trend which led us to great revolutions, and electric, then electronic, then digital storytelling and all our storytelling tools of today—and tomorrow’s.
In this remarkable book, more than twenty-five years in the making, Ashton looks at the development of human storytelling to help us understand where we are in the latest iteration that is the digital era. Drawing on examples from art, literature, music, and pop culture, from the Bible to Bon Jovi, Aristotle to Artificial Intelligence, Frederick Douglass to Facebook, and cave paintings to cinema, The Story of Stories is a passionate and crucial exploration of how stories and the tools we use to tell them continue to change us, cause revolutions, and connect us to each other and give our lives meaning.
400 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 3, 2026
About the author
Kevin Ashton
6 books98 followersKevin Ashton led pioneering work on RFID (radio frequency identification) networks, for which he coined the term "the Internet of Things," and co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT. His writing about innovation and technology has appeared in Quartz, Medium, The Atlantic, and the New York Times.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 22, 2026
Audiobook! Vibes reminded me of Game of Thrones and “How It’s Made” lol. This book was different than what I expected. I did have to switch to audiobook pretty quick but that’s just bc it was a denser book than I usually like. It was surprisingly interesting! I learned about how paper was made and a lot about Facebook.
March 23, 2026
Ashton is a capable writer, and there's nothing wrong with this book. But the book's marketing is misleading. Ashton focuses 80% of this book on the technical development and operation of book technologies. The development of clay tablets, the history of paper production, the complicated history of Gutenberg's printing press, etc.
I came to this book wanting to learn about how storytelling has actually evolved over the centuries. Ashton could have covered the emergence of these technologies, how they changed the way we tell stories, and how the stories themselves changed in terms of structure, circulation, audience response, etc. But he stops short of extending his analysis into the actual stories. I don't need to read page after page about the technical minutiae of how an LCD television screen was invented and evolved, or how Facebook created an evolving algorithm driven by corporate greed and lack of conscience. Sections like these read way more like a business/trade book than a book about the nature and history of storytelling.
There's a place for a book like that, but there's less of a market for it than a book about the history of storytelling. I feel like the framing of the book is incredibly misleading. The technological history is fine, but Ashton never directly connects it to the evolution of storytelling.
I came to this book wanting to learn about how storytelling has actually evolved over the centuries. Ashton could have covered the emergence of these technologies, how they changed the way we tell stories, and how the stories themselves changed in terms of structure, circulation, audience response, etc. But he stops short of extending his analysis into the actual stories. I don't need to read page after page about the technical minutiae of how an LCD television screen was invented and evolved, or how Facebook created an evolving algorithm driven by corporate greed and lack of conscience. Sections like these read way more like a business/trade book than a book about the nature and history of storytelling.
There's a place for a book like that, but there's less of a market for it than a book about the history of storytelling. I feel like the framing of the book is incredibly misleading. The technological history is fine, but Ashton never directly connects it to the evolution of storytelling.
April 17, 2026
I gave up on The Story of Stories with a just a few pages left. The early chapters pulled me in. I appreciated the focus on evolutionary psychology, why humans tell stories, and how storytelling helps us make sense of the world and connect with each other. It felt like the book was building toward something meaningful about shared human experience.
But the second half loses that thread. The focus shifts heavily into contemporary cultural narratives. That may be intentional, but it’s not especially compelling, and it doesn’t meaningfully connect back to storytelling.
More importantly, it stops being engaging as storytelling. For a book about stories, it rarely tells one in a way that feels vivid or human. It leans into commentary instead of connection.
I was hoping for a deeper exploration of how storytelling evolves and reflects something universal across time. The book points in that direction early on, but doesn’t follow through. There are solid ideas here, but it doesn’t deliver on the promise of its premise.
But the second half loses that thread. The focus shifts heavily into contemporary cultural narratives. That may be intentional, but it’s not especially compelling, and it doesn’t meaningfully connect back to storytelling.
More importantly, it stops being engaging as storytelling. For a book about stories, it rarely tells one in a way that feels vivid or human. It leans into commentary instead of connection.
I was hoping for a deeper exploration of how storytelling evolves and reflects something universal across time. The book points in that direction early on, but doesn’t follow through. There are solid ideas here, but it doesn’t deliver on the promise of its premise.
April 22, 2026
Didn't think I needed a book about stories, but here we are. Ashton takes you from the campfire through clay tablets through Gutenberg and all the way to the phone in your pocket, and somewhere around the printing press I realized I was having fun. The idea that stuck with me is that every jump in storytelling tech means more people get to tell and more people get to hear. Makes the smartphone feel less like a toy and more like the latest link in a very long chain.
March 14, 2026
A fun and interesting look at how we live by stories and how stories can make us better and how stories can cause enormous problems when they go off the rails. Highly recommended for all of us who think and worry and have hopes for our world. I hope the author follows up and writes more on these subjects. Enjoy!
May 23, 2026
Woah this book was fucked up. No, I mean, this book was great. But the things it made me ponder and think about… let’s just say made for a very uneasy sleep. What starts as a fun-sounding jaunt down the history of story-telling finishes with an ernest plea for critical thinking at the cost of our extinction. So yeah, a very intense journey with far reaching consequences.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Ultimately, this is both an explanation and defense of what it means to be human. We need both more than ever.
April 19, 2026
Fascinante lectura (hecha en audiolibro) de divulgación científica que puede ser un complemento perfecto para El Infinito en un Junco de Irene Vallejo.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews