Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

by William J. Bernstein

Overview

In his new book, William J. Bernstein, the celebrated author of A Splendid Exchange, chronicles the history of media, starting with the origin of writing thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. The revolutionary tool gave rise to the world’s ancient empires. And when Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy’s first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy.

But it’s not just new communication technologies that have changed the world—it’s access to them. Vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, but it was only when the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg’s printing press drove down the cost of books by 97 percent that the fuse of Reformation was lit. The Industrial Revolution allowed information to move faster and farther than ever before, though it concentrated power in the hands of those who ran radio and TV stations, large newspapers, and then, totalitarian governments. With the twenty-first century boom of the mobile Internet, control of media has again spread, and the world is both more connected and freer than ever before. An utterly captivating, enlightening book, Masters of the Word will change the way you look at technology, human history, and power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802121394
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	07/08/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

William J. Bernstein Willliam J. Berstein is a financial theorist and historian whose books include The Four Pillars of Investing, The Birth of Plenty, and A Splendid Exchange.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Origins 15

2 The ABCs of Democracy 43

3 Twelve Tablets, Seven Hills, and a Few Early Christians 82

4 Before Gutenberg 109

5 Punch and Counterpunch 139

6 The Captive Press 180

7 With a Machete in One Hand and a Radio in the Other 220

8 The Comrades Who Couldn't Broadcast Straight 253

9 The Argus 301

Notes 341

Bibliography 377

Acknowledgments 397

Illustration Credits 399

Index 403

Editorial Reviews

“[Bernstein] enables us to see what remains the same, even as much has changed: Henry VIII had William Tyndale burned at the stake for making the Bible available in English; today, dictators and their henchmen beat up and murder protesters by the hundreds, likewise (simply put) to maintain control of information.”—Library Journal, “Editors’ Picks”

“In Masters of the Word, a master storyteller, synthesizer, and historian shows us how the power of the word has toppled tyrants. I love reading what Bernstein writes.”—Ed Tower, Professor of Economics, Duke University

“Masters of the Word takes you on a fascinating trip, from the invention of writing to the creation of the world-wide Web. Bernstein masterfully describes not just the inventions and the inventors that created modern media, but the forces underlying their impact. Riveting and thoroughly researched, it brims with interesting ideas and astonishing connections.” —Phil Lapsley, author of Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell

“Fascinating … an engaging mix of theory, fact and enlightenment from across the millennia that wears its rich scholarship lightly.”—Peter Preston, The Guardian (UK)

“[Bernstein’s] narrative is succinct and extremely well sourced. . . . [He] reminds us of a number of technologies whose changed roles are less widely chronicled in conventional histories of the media.”—Irish Times

“This sweeping, although selective, historical narrative by award-winning financial historian Bernstein elucidates in highly readable fashion the role of ‘media’—in which he includes advances from ancient alphabets to movable type to twenty-first-century technology—in shaping civilization and determining democratic versus despotic tendencies. Bernstein’s thesis that ‘power accrues to the literate’ should not be taken simplistically; his larger arguments are learned and elegantly made. … His occasional invocation of modern phenomena in a nonmodern context … lend charm and clarity to what might have otherwise been dauntingly erudite. Instead, Bernstein offers an accessible, quite enjoyable, and highly informative read that will hold surprises even for those familiar with some of the history he covers.”—Mark Levine, Booklist

"Fascinating."—Irish Examiner

From the Publisher

Financial historian Bernstein (A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, 2008, etc.) shifts gears slightly to focus on communication as an engine of change. In the author's hands, "media" is a broad term, encompassing the invention of writing and the development of a workable alphabet, as well as such better-known innovations as the printing press, telegraph, radio, TV and Internet. Bernstein emphasizes the control of information as the decisive factor in all struggles for power. In societies like ancient Egypt, where only a small number of people could read and write, the ability to communicate over distances enabled the creation of vast empires. Increasing literacy brought increasing democracy in Greece. Early Christian dissidents, like John Wycliffe, did not have the world-shaking impact that Martin Luther did, since Luther's criticism of the Catholic Church swiftly spread through Europe via multiple copies made possible by the printing press. Bernstein does a nice job explaining the technical issues that made Gutenberg's process so revolutionary and later does the same for the Web. The Catholic Church may have lost control of the dissemination of information, but nation-states like England and France initially did better in muzzling newspapers, and authorities in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union harnessed radio to their totalitarian ends. Bernstein makes the fascinating point that photocopying has played a vital role in making public materials that the powers that be very much want to keep to themselves--e.g., the Pentagon Papers. With the rise of the Internet, he points out, Daniel Ellsberg could have made those documents available to millions with a few computer keystrokes. Dire warnings about the destructive impact of blogging, etc., on responsible journalism "are simply the age-old howls of communications elites facing the imminent loss of status and income." The author touches only briefly on the role of social media in the Arab Spring, which in this context, is merely a further development in historic trends capably delineated throughout his provocative book. A smart take from an unusual angle on a much-discussed media trend.

Kirkus Reviews