Nicholas A. John's The age of sharing is largely devoted to one of the most important and complicated keywords in contemporary culture, viz. sharing, which has characterized much of current digital life and culture. Focusing on three spheres where sharing plays a crucial role, John aims to show that ‘sharing, both as a broad category of social practices, and as the word used to describe a wide range of practices, is on the rise’ (5).

Chapter 1 is an introduction, discussing the definition and meaning of sharing, together with some previous studies in this field. Chapter 2 presents, based on corpus analysis and ‘a diachronic approach’ (21), the evolution of the meanings of sharing, highlighting in particular how sharing and caring have been closely related to each other. Chapter 3 begins with the relationship between sharing and the internet. Then the focus moves on to sharing in social media and its three main characteristics: fuzzy objects of sharing, no object of sharing, and ‘deploying the notion of sharing where it was not used before’ (58). This chapter ends with a discussion of how sharing has been exploited by companies to make profits. Chapter 4 is centered on sharing economies, showing the evolution of the notion of the sharing economy in relation to production and consumption. Sharing is considered as ‘a natural and innate behavior’ (75) of human beings at both individual and social levels. Besides, the sharing economy is closely related to network technology, with the latter acting as both an enabler and a driver of the former.

In chapter 5, ‘Sharing our feelings’, John offers a view of sharing as a type of communication by analyzing sharing across different domains. Reflecting and constructing desires for sincere and authentic communication, sharing is a component of our intimate relationships. It is illuminating for John to remind us that sharing is nowadays partly manipulated as a marketing tool by social media firms. Sharing makes, to some extent, the private public in both therapy culture and the sharing economy. Chapter 6, ‘Sharing files’, emphasizes the ‘sharing’ part of file sharing, demonstrating how excessive sharing can be solved and how file sharing has become a metaphor we human beings live by. Chapter 7 is the conclusion, in which John reiterates the most significant observations of the book, arguing that sharing is actually associated with a set of values and showing that we are living in the age of sharing and that we need to attach greater importance to this topic.

To conclude, the author must be credited for presenting a very timely and welcome text about sharing in the digital age, which has actually become a ubiquitous social practice. This book should be of much value to people doing anthropology, linguistics, technologically mediated communication, and digital culture. One might have the impression that this book is more sociology than sociolinguistics-oriented. It might, for example, be revealing to explore and expound gender differences in sharing from a truly sociolinguistic perspective.