Why read Knowledge is Power?

Book cover of Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865

Book description

One of the leading scholars dealing with early communication history in America, Richard Brown discusses how information moved through eighteenth and nineteenth-century American society, principally through the expansion of the printed word and its change from the property of the learned and wealthy into a mass-audience market.

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Knowledge is Power as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrew Pettegree

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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.

From Andrew's list on The best books on the history of communication.