In Search of Jefferson’s Moose (Oxford, 2009) recreates Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia,” this time for the Internet — cyberspace filtered through Jefferson’s eyes and Jefferson’s ideas. Along the way, we learn some pretty interesting things about the Internet, and about Jefferson ­ about growth and scale in populations and networks, about network design and Jefferson’s plan for governing the Western Territory, about the protocol stack and the canals of France, about distributed routing, end-to-end design, and the Louisiana Purchase. And about why Jefferson had a moose shipped to him in Paris while he was serving as US minister to France, and why we should care about that.

“Beautifully written . . . extraordinary . . . astonishing” [LAWRENCE LESSIG]

“David Post’s musing about cyberspace, the law, history, and a great deal more has produced an authentic work of genius, conceived and written in the finest Jeffersonian spirit.” [SEAN WILENTZ]

“Brilliant - and a joy to read. The book of a career: sweeping in scope, without dropping a stitch of detail.” [JONATHAN ZITTRAIN]

““David Post is the Jefferson of cyberspace, and in this creative, playful, and entirely original book, he applies Jefferson’s insights about governing the American frontier to governance on the Net.” [JEFFREY ROSEN]

More reviews and commentary (from Eugene Volokh, Clive Crook, Ethan Zuckerman, among others …) can be found here

One of the nice things about going around and giving talks about the book is that listeners offer up some good ideas about candidates for the “moose” for the Net. I was somewhat unsatisfied with my own choice — Wikipedia — in the book, and with good reason: though it is a good candidate for something “dazzling” on the Net (in the way that the moose was dazzling to those in the Old World), it doesn’t have the same “we need new thinking about things” quality that a good Moose should have. Of all the candidates I’ve seen so far, I think Larry Lessig had the best version, here. Well worth watching –