When I was younger, my personal stereo may as well have been surgically attached to me. Whether it was a cassette player, a discman, a mini-disc player, or iPod, I never went anywhere without it (in my cargo-pants side pocket, no less). Now, I use my iPhone, but the principle is still the same. Portable music changed the way I existed out in the world - with my own personal soundtrack, it made being out in the world more interesting and personalized.

In this short, well-written book, Tuhus-Dubrow examines how the invention of the personal stereo changed the way we interacted with the world. The author also offers a quick biography of the inventors of the personal stereo, and other technology that predated it and set us on the path towards embracing it. The author touches upon many subjects connected to the technology, and creates a well-rounded and engaging discussion.

A really interesting book. I was pleasantly surprised.

A beautiful trubute to the walkman and it's history. Full of interesting little facts that I never knew about. May be a little lost on the millenial generation who expect this type of technology on tap.

If you're old enough to remember having a Walkman, you'll definitely enjoy this book. Though it may be lost on some younger readers, I thoroughly enjoyed the exploration of one of my favorite childhood objects. Though my love has evolved for earbuds in my phone, the concept is still the same, and it's always fun revisiting nostalgia. Not required, but definitely recommended nerd reading.

A beautiful tribute to "The Walkman", even when i didn't have one mine, i used to use the one of my mom, so this thing is just freaking awesome to remember. Oh! The nostalgia

Really liked the premise and the writing of the author. A short, effective and thought-provoking read in my opinion. However, could use a little more development and editing to reflect the author's views more explicitly.

A fascinating addition to the always interesting and enlightening Object Lessons series. The personal stereo explored and examined from its invention to its implications to its design. Everything you could ever want to know about this small device that revolutionised the way we listen to music and spoken word.

Children of the '80s will enjoy the nostalgia trip in Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow's Personal Stereo, part of Bloomsbury Acedemic's "Object Lessons" series. She succinctly follows the rise, influence, and lasting societal impact of the Sony Walkman. Sony introduced the compact cassette player, paired with lightweight headphones, in the late 1970s, and seemingly overnight they were everywhere, the most coveted new invention in memory.


Imitators quickly followed, of course. I think my first Walkman (the word became generic for all brands, not just Sony) was actually the Panasonic Way. I don't know that it had any great advantage over Sony's, other than I thought it looked cool. Even with the imitators, there is no question Sony was the pioneer. Tuhus-Dubrow spends a lot of time on the fans and the critics of the new technology. I remember well the warnings about hearing loss, and the frowns of others when a Walkman user went through life in his or her Walkman-induced isolation.


Her reflections on the differences between Walkman use and smart phone use are interesting. While both can give the user a sense of isolation, there is something more pure about Walkman use. It's a single-purpose tool, not prone to the interruptions and distractions from the music that smartphones give us.


Personal Stereo is thoughtful, reflective, and honoring to the innovation that Walkman represented. The Walkman spurred a revolution in the music industry, and, arguably, revolutionized the way we consume and enjoy music. Tuhus-Dubrow fosters a deep appreciation for the Walkman.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Attributed by some as the beginning of the narcissist culture, the walkman was hotly debated by lawyers and inventors. The author does an excellent job of turning a rather passe object into a relevant topic for today's readers. Good job!

Personal Stereo traces back a significant moment in the music revolution, that is the step from shared music to a personal listening experience, thanks to the invention of the Walkman by Sony.

The book tells on one side the story of the invention - from the establishment of Sony in the Japanese after war, and on the other side the social implications of the personal stereo itself.

It was a very interesting reading, the part I preferred was the one about Sony business and the launch of the Walkman on the market.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

This was a very informative read and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the Walkman or who is interested in music and audio in general. The author does an excellent job of interviewing the people who were involved and weaving those conversations into the narrative. Great read all around.

Being an avid music fan, I was vastly interested in the history of the Walkman. And while the historical aspects were good, the book felt all over the place in general. The author inserted themselves in random places after being absent for long periods. I actually enjoyed reading about their experience with the personal stereo, but it was a bit unexpected coming after pages and pages of chronological history with little input from them. Another big issue I had with the book is how it felt like I was reading an essay. There were moments when it felt too formal and used too many academic terms. It made me lose interest pretty fast. Other times, it felt like the writer went off on various tangents related to Walkman culture, like what it was like growing up in the 70s and 80s. While interesting, you often questioned why you just read those pages.
Personal Stereo has good intentions and there’s a lot of great history there, but in the end, it’s just not focused. By the end, you were never really sure just what the writer was trying to get across. The idea is great, but not the best execution.

This was a lovely, short read that divulged a large amount of information that I never realised I was missing.

As a child of the 90s, the Walkman was already a cemented proposition by the time I was a teenager and my abiding memory is of a portable CD player as opposed to the old tapes. As a result I was unaware of a completely fascinating cultural revolution which preceded me.

The book is really enjoyable, tracking the progress of music as a collective experience to a personal one through the development of personal stereos, while acknowledging the interruption this created for the culture of the time. The background story of SONY added a lot to the story also- though I knew the company was a big name in the market, I didn't realise that they originated the personal stereo.

The author shows a sense of nostalgia which is relateable even for someone who missed the beginning of the revolution, which made for a really pleasant read. Super interesting.

Bloomsbury Academic Press has released a series of "Object Lessons" over the last few years that are books on items that have less significance these days or have lost their charm in time but some of us might experience the same amount of nostalgia about many of these "objects" whenever we see one of them.

This is my first reading in the Object Lessons series and it's about the famously known device that ran on batteries for decades until in the previous decade replaced by the iPod. Yes, I am talking about the Walkman or some prefer to call it a personal stereo. Written by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Personal Stereo is all about the handheld device that ran a cassette tape, with play, pause and forward and backward buttons. Starting from the post World War II Japan where one can find the origins of this device as well as the famous Sony Outlook that changed the public outlook and access towards music forever.

Rebecca's study starts from Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita both who co-founded Sony Corporation along with the history of their famous product, Walkman. Along with the nostalgia that comes from the reminding oneself of dear past activities or objects that one could relate to, a reader can feel it with the writer. She goes on to discuss the cultural points that make this handheld device unique and acceptable over various part of the world for decades whereas the employees of Sony Corporation at the time of the Walkman's origin felt to be absurd and a crazy idea that would lead to failure, a belief that did not share similar outcome in reality.

Author's descriptive manner implying the nature and working of the device and her own experience with it, certainly indulges the reader deeply with the context. She takes the reader through the rise and fall of Sony and the era of cassette tapes. It's a quick read and for someone who has been the owner of such a device will feel the essence of the fond memories of wearing up a set of foamy headphones.

4 out of 5!

I grew up in the era that the walkman was at its height of popularity and I so remember how it was such a wanted item. So for me this was a very fun book to read about its history. This was a very well written and not dry history of a piece of tech that changed the world in its own way. I highly recommend this book.

Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow
Going down to the old mine with a
Transistor radio

“Brown Eyed Girl”, Van Morrison

Personal Stereo

Personal Stereo by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is a study of what is now one of the most common devices seen in society. Tuhus-Dubrow is a Contributing Editor at Dissent. She was previously a contributing writer for the Boston Globe’s Ideas section, a columnist for the urban affairs website Next City, and a Journalism and Media Fellow at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Bloomsbury Academic Press has released a growing series of object lessons over the last few years. These are ordinary items that usually don’t get a second thought. My introduction to the series was Hood a book covering hoods from executioners to hoodies. In this edition, the book took me back to my discovery of music. I remember listening to music, football, and AM music on a transistor radio with a single ear bud. The mono earphone jack allowed the listener keep one ear on the music and the other on the world around them.

The Walkman brought a change. It was stereo and it let the listener chose what he or she listened to. Long before Napster and Pirate Bay people pirated music by copying vinyl records to cassette and trading with friends. This later evolved into the 80s mixed tapes which were given to special friends. Cassette tapes were the MP3s, or rather the removable storage of the day; stereos even had a side by side cassette players to copy music from one tape to another. Music became personal and portable. The Walkman offered another layer of personalization. You could listen to your music anywhere without disturbing others around you. Stereo headphones completed your privacy as you could block out the world around you with tinny sounding headphone speakers covered in a removable foam sock set over your ear.

Today, this is all too common with iPods and now with phones taking the place of the Walkman. Just glance around a commuter train or a bus and see how many people have earbuds in their ears. Previously, when trapped in a window seat a simple “Excuse me” was enough to signal to the person in the aisle seat that it was your stop. Today usually a tap on the shoulder is needed to bring that person back into the world.

Personal Stereo is the history of a device that had no original market (a cassette player that did not record) yet caught on and changed the way we listen to music. The original Sony Walkman was a hefty 14 ounces (compared to 1.1 ounces of an iPod Nano) but was so portable people used them when running. Today, nearly a pound of extra weight would be scoffed at by most runners. Sony wasn’t alone with its portable cassette player. Soon there were many knockoffs on the market but none better than the original. Walkman, like Xerox, was a product name that entered our vocabulary not only as an original but also as any comparable item. Your photocopy was called a Xerox no matter whose machine made it. Any personal portable stereo was called a “Walkman.”

Sony wasn’t alone with its portable cassette player. Soon there were many knockoffs on the market but none better than the original. Walkman, like Xerox, was a product name that entered our vocabulary not only as an original but also as any comparable item. Your photocopy was called a Xerox no matter whose machine made it. Any personal portable stereo was called a “Walkman.”

Tuhus-Dubrow takes the reader through the rise and fall of Sony and the era of cassette tapes. A nice contemporary cultural history of something that has become solidly entrenched in our culture. As I am typing this I am listening to Karla Bonoff on my iPhone through Bluetooth headphones. The same artist I would have been listening to doing this at a typewriter with a Walkman thirty-five years ago. Times change, but Personal Stereo shows us that behavior only evolves.



Available September 7, 2017

Personal Stereo is an interesting little book, though not what I thought it would be. It started out as I expected, by describing the origin and history of the Walkman. (The origin of the concept is actually quite murky, with multiple people claiming to be the first to conceive of a personal cassette player). I was surprised to learn that the first portable cassette units were actually recorders, designed for reporters and court stenographers.

The tone of the book turns unexpectedly serious during the "Norm" chapter. Some social critics at the time apparently believed that the Walkman would bring about the end of civilized society. This section of the book gets unwieldy, as the decline of etiquette, hearing loss, people getting hit by trains, the rise of the yuppie, music piracy, and even masturbation are all topics of discussion.

The third chapter is entitled "Nostalgia," and the tone lightens again. Children of the 80s do feel nostalgic about the Walkman, as evidenced by the spike in prices for a used one after Guardians of the Galaxy was released.

This was a quick read, and will bring back fond memories for those of us who grew up with foamy headphones.

I have an enormous amount of nostalgic fondness for the Walkman, being a child of the 80s and 90s I remember the first time I used one and discovered the unadulterated joy of blocking out the anxiety of the surrounding world...I was very young but fell in love instantly. I remember staying up late on Friday nights to record my favorite 80s songs off of Friday Night 80s and planning the perfect tape collection (and calculating all the batteries I would need) for the yearly road trip, and of course all the music I would listen to while I worked with my parents. My little personal stereo was a solace in my younger days, I even preferred it to the much coveted portable CD player because on the bumpy long bus trips to school my Walkman didn't skip like the CD player.

I remember the soul-crushing dread of the tape being eaten or batteries finally dying, now my worry is my phone won't get a good wifi signal for Pandora or I can't fit all my music on my mp3 player...what a charmed life I live!

This book was a great trip into nostalgia and gave me a historical context for the much-loved machine, learning more about one of the staples of my youth and how it impacted the rest of the world was truly fascinating!

While too often the entries to this series concerning the less-regarded elements of our modern lives have been too, hem hem, personal, this one really does hit the target. We see the social and cultural history of the Walkman, from the society that allowed Sony to grow post-WWII, up to the death of the thing with Apple MP3 players and smart phones. How someone other than Sony made the first one, how the restrictions on how it played you music may have been a good thing, and how it provided an irreversible shift in the behaviours of people taking their personal entertainment out into the greater world are all covered, and it's all in a perfectly presentable fashion. A really good book, concerning perhaps a subject you'd not think at great lengths about yourself – but can only be grateful that our author has.

I have to point out from the start that I was probably biased in favour of this book before ever starting it - I have a great nostalgic love of walkmans, and an interest in both advertising and design history ... especially for everyday objects. I love following the path from idea to cultural mainstay in histories like this - and Personal Stereo definitely delivered. There was poignant cultural observation/commentary, historical fact, details of the design process ... very well rounded! The author supported the text with several well-chosen photos and advertisements that really added to the narrative as well.

I'm really keen to read this series now, provided the commentary and research for the rest are as insightful and entertaining as in this book!

I love music almost as much as reading so when I saw this book I knew it was a must-read (plus the cover is fabulous). I had not encountered the Object Lessons series previously, but after reading this one I plan to seek out more of them. Personal Stereo is a quick and fascinating read that covers both the history of the Walkman and its effects on society. The Walkman’s debut occurred when I was young so I do not remember either the excitement it generated nor the consternation about its potential negative impact on society. Looking back from a time when iPhones exist, at times it was almost comical to read some of the concerns that critics voiced about the Walkman.

Personal Stereo thankfully begins long before the invention of the Walkman with a history of Sony and its founders, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita. I found this section incredibly engaging and loved learning that Sony began with a staff of eight crammed into a small office in a bombed downtown Tokyo department store in 1945. The company’s initial name was Tokyo Telecommunications Research and was later changed to Sony, derived from the Latin word for sound and a play on the English word “sonny”, a slang term meaning young boy that was common in Japan at the time. The company first began upgrading radios and then eventually produced the first tape recorder available in Japan. Next, Sony produced the transistor radio eventually earning one of its researchers the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the invention. As the saying goes “and the rest is history”.

The author also focuses on the shift from only being able to listen to music live to having music available on the radio and later records, cassettes, CDs and finally MP3 players. Again, this was not something I have ever thought twice about and was somewhat enthralled that critics could not “bear to hear a remarkably life-like human voice issuing from a box.” Music suddenly became something in the background frequently instead of the focal point. As I frequently use music to pass the time on car trips, while folding laundry and cooking dinner, and as something to just relax my mind, I was completely intrigued with the concept that recorded music caused such an uproar initially. What a sad world we would live in without easy access to music.

While there are several genesis stories for the creation of the Walkman, Sony employees generally felt the Walkman would be a failure. A tape recorder that was not used to tape something seemed absurd, and the fact that no invention occurred but instead Sony teams working together merged existing technologies (and actually removed the taping function) seemed a crazy idea for most people in the field at the time. Clearly, as with many new products, the Walkman was not only an immediate success but changed the way people listened to music going forward.

The inclusion of numerous photos and newspaper advertisements add significant value to the book. I loved looking at the old Walkman ads and the focus on taking sound with you. There is so much more to this book, and it is well worth the read. I clearly loved Personal Stereo and highly recommend it. Thanks so much to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.