Andrew Pettegree is professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews. A leading expert on the history of book and media transformations, Pettegree is the award-winning author of several books on news and information culture. Arthur der Weduwen is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of St. Andrews.
They are the authors of The Library: A Fragile History.
At Shepherd Pettegree tagged five top books on the history of communication, including:
Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 by Richard D. BrownRead about the other entries on the list.
The key obstacle to communication in the pre-modern age was distance: this was particularly the case in the transported communities of European settlers in distant continents, often sparsely settled and without the familiar settled infrastructure of roads and trade. In this landmark study, Richard Brown considers the case of colonial America and the early Republic through a series of well-chosen case studies. These reveals that Americans relied on a multi-media experience of newsgathering, where conversation, gossip, and neighbour networks competed with new media innovations. An instant classic full of insight.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
