The Handbook of Communication History addresses central ideas, social practices, and media of communication as they have developed across time, cultures, and world geographical regions. It attends to both the varieties of communication in world history and the historical investigation of those forms in communication and media studies. The Handbook editors view communication as encompassing patterns, processes, and performances of social interaction, symbolic production, material exchange, institutional formation, social praxis, and discourse. As such, the history of communication cuts across social, cultural, intellectual, political, technological, institutional, and economic history.

The volume examines the history of communication history; the history of ideas of communication; the history of communication media; and the history of the field of communication. Readers will explore the history of the object under consideration (relevant practices, media, and ideas), review its manifestations in different regions and cultures (comparative dimensions), and orient toward current thinking and historical research on the topic (current state of the field). As a whole, the volume gathers disparate strands of communication history into one volume, offering an accessible and panoramic view of the development of communication over time and geographical places, and providing a catalyst to further work in communication history.

Over the last two decades Oprah Winfrey's journey has taken her from talk show queen to - as Time Magazine has asserted - "one of the most important figures in popular culture." Through her talk show, magazine, website, seminars, charity work, and public appearances, her influence in the social, economic, and political arenas of American life is considerable and until now, largely unexamined.. In "The Age of Oprah," media scholar and journalist Janice Peck traces Winfrey's growing cultural impact and illustrates the fascinating parallels between her road to fame and fortune and the political-economic rise of neoliberalism in this country. While seeking to understand Oprah's ascent to near iconic status that she enjoys today, Peck's book provides a fascinating window into the intersection of American politics and culture over the past quarter century.

Over the last two decades Oprah Winfrey's journey has taken her from talk show queen to - as Time Magazine has asserted - "one of the most important figures in popular culture." Through her talk show, magazine, website, seminars, charity work, and public appearances, her influence in the social, economic, and political arenas of American life is considerable and until now, largely unexamined.. In "The Age of Oprah," media scholar and journalist Janice Peck traces Winfrey's growing cultural impact and illustrates the fascinating parallels between her road to fame and fortune and the political-economic rise of neoliberalism in this country. While seeking to understand Oprah's ascent to near iconic status that she enjoys today, Peck's book provides a fascinating window into the intersection of American politics and culture over the past quarter century.

The Handbook of Communication History addresses central ideas, social practices, and media of communication as they have developed across time, cultures, and world geographical regions. It attends to both the varieties of communication in world history and the historical investigation of those forms in communication and media studies. The Handbook editors view communication as encompassing patterns, processes, and performances of social interaction, symbolic production, material exchange, institutional formation, social praxis, and discourse. As such, the history of communication cuts across social, cultural, intellectual, political, technological, institutional, and economic history.

The volume examines the history of communication history; the history of ideas of communication; the history of communication media; and the history of the field of communication. Readers will explore the history of the object under consideration (relevant practices, media, and ideas), review its manifestations in different regions and cultures (comparative dimensions), and orient toward current thinking and historical research on the topic (current state of the field). As a whole, the volume gathers disparate strands of communication history into one volume, offering an accessible and panoramic view of the development of communication over time and geographical places, and providing a catalyst to further work in communication history.

In A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication Since World War II, Janice Peck and Inger L. Stole have collected sixteen essays that examine the remarkable role that media have played in post-WWII U.S. history. From an examination of the impact that the cold war and Senator McCarthy had on media content in the 1950s to an analysis of the role that Oprah Winfrey has played in shaping understandings of race in American culture, A Moment of Danger offers a wide array of critical studies, all of which, however, aim at thinking carefully not only about the way in which the modes of media keep us in contact with the world, but also about how they shape the way we understand ourselves and our world.