Rob Walters

This is easily one of the strangest biographies I have ever read. Spread Spectrum tells the story of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil and follows the development of spread spectrum technologies by mostly focusing on the lives of these two individuals. The book does a good job defining the different technologies and focusing on the lives of the two main protagonists. However, this is a self-published book and could really use the help of an editor. There are frequent asides, long interjections show more about the author's personal life and bizarre ventures into fictionalizing what might have happened at key events throughout the story. The author clearly used some sort of auto-dictation software because there were many homophones (gilded vs. guilded, there vs. their, etc). Also, the author references Amazon reviews of Lamarr's movies as an interpretation of how modern movie watchers respond to Lamarr. Although, even with all these strange asides and bizarre formatting I did enjoy the book. Walters's enthusiasm is contagious and he explains technical details with great aplomb. Its an interesting story and a shame that Lamarr and Antheil's achievements are not more widely celebrated in modern society. show less