Communication in History's outstanding selection of readings from classic and contemporary sources gives an
extensive overview of the most important ideas in the field.
Encompassing topics as wide-ranging as the role of printing in the rise of the modern state and the role of the
Internet in the Information Age, this anthology reveals how media have been influential both in maintaining social
order and as powerful agents of change. Revised with new readings for the Fifth Edition, Communication in History
continues to be, as one reviewer wrote, "the only text in the sea of History of Mass Communication texts that
introduces students to a more expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history
and communication history."
Features
Concise but comprehensive chapters vary in style and level, making it easy for instructors to tailor assignments
to their courses.
Readings feature major writers including Innis, Ong, McLuhan, Schudson, Mumford, Postman, and many others.
Part introductions provide an overview of the concepts and scholars presented in each section.
"Suggestions for Further Reading" section serves as a guide to reading in greater depth.
Entries on television in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s help to make the television section more historically complete.
Discussion of the telegraph highlights how it transformed a variety of media practices.
An advertising entry shows more clearly how consumption and mass society develops through media practices.
An entry on early printing technology in China increases the text's coverage of non-Western communications
traditions.
New To This Edition
Includes two new entries on radio that enhance students' understanding of the role of radio networks and advertisers
in the 1930s and 1940s and explores radio's transformation following the rise of television.
Enriches coverage of digital communication and new media to make the text more up-to-date and a better guide
for assessing contemporary technological change.
Adds an entry on communication and monastic culture in the Middle Ages, further expanding the text's history
coverage and giving students insight into the impact of communication and culture in this time period.
Revisits the classic encounter between two pre-eminent media critics, Camille Paglia and the late Neil Postman.
Enriches coverage of early writing with a new piece by Denise Schmandt-Besserat that reinterprets previous
archeological finds.
Table of Contents
Forward
Preface
Part 1
1. Marshack, Art and Symbols of Ice Age Man
2. Schmandt-Besserat, The Earliest Precursor of Writing
3. Innis, Media in Ancient Empires
4. Ascher and Ascher, Civilization with Writing
5. Robinson, The Origins of Writing
Part 2
6. Drucker, The Alphabet
7. Havelock, The Greek Legacy
8. Logan, Writing and the Alphabet Effect
9. Ong, Orality, Literacy and Modern Media
10. Burke and Ornstein, Communication and Faith in the Middle Ages
Part 3
11. Carter, Paper and Block Printing -- From China to Europe
12. Mumford, The Invention of Printing
13. Eisenstein, The Rise of the Reading Public
14. Graff, Early Modern Literacies
15. Thompson, The Trade in News
16. Darnton, The News in Paris: An Early Information Society
Part 4
17. Headrick, The Optical Telegraph
18. Standage, Telegraphy -- The Victorian Internet
19. Schudson, The New Journalism
20. Fischer, The Telephone Takes Command
21. Marvin, Inventing the Expert
22. Carey, Time, Space and the Telegraph
Part 5
23. Keller, Early Photojournalism
24. Williams, Dream Worlds of Consumption
25. Nasaw, Talking and Singing Machines
26. Czitrom, Early Motion Pictures
27. Eyman, Movies Talk
28. Fowles, Mass Media and the Star System
29. Lears, Advertising and the Idea of Mass Society
Part 6
30. Kern, Wireless World
31. Douglas, Early Radio
32. Sterling Kitross, The Golden Age of Programming
33. Hilmes, Radio Voices
34. Fornatale and Mills, Radio in the Television Age
35. McLuhan, Understanding Radio
Part 7
36. Boddy, Television Begins
37. Carpenter, The New Languages
38. Spigel, Making Room for TV
39.Bodnoghkozy, The Sixties Counterculture on TV
40. Stephens, Television Transforms the News
41. Postman Paglia, He Wants His Book -- She Wants Her TV
Part 8
42. Beniger, The Control Revolution
43. Schwartz Cowen, The Social Shape of Electronics
44. Manovich, How Media Became New
45. Abbate, Popularizing the Internet
46. O'Donnell, From the Codex Page to the Homepage
47. Bolter Grusin, The World Wide Web
