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The great exchange : making the news in early modern Europe / Joad Raymond Wren.

Kislak Center for Special Collections - Furness Shakespeare Library (Van Pelt 628) PN5110 .W74 2025
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Wren, Joad R., author.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Journalism--Europe--History.
Journalism.
Newspaper publishing--Europe--History.
Newspaper publishing.
Press--History.
Press.
Physical Description:
xxii, 596 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates ; illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 24 cm
Place of Publication:
London [England] : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2025.
Summary:
News moves. It is a battle, a scandal, a disaster. It is a letter, a newspaper, a proclamation. News is a material thing, but also something between us, something we take into us and feel. This book tells the story of news from the sunset of the Middle Ages to the rise of mass media in modern times. It begins in Renaissance Italy, with the envoys and merchants who drew in and disseminated news across Europe, establishing its channels and conventions. Following the beat of news around the continent, it uncovers a vast, invisible network traversing the boundaries of geography and politics, religion and language. Joad Raymond Wren allows the reader to see news - of the battle of Lepanto, the siege of Vienna - spreading around this network in real time. Dispelling the tenacious myth that news was until the printing press scarce and unreliable, and until the telegraph slow and provincial, he opens up windows onto a world buzzing with news from faraway. News brought the distant closer, and provided the means for Europe to know itself. The continent was, for a time, held together by that most essential of human acts: communication.
Contents:
Introduction: A trembling movement
Before the fall : letters of news and commerce to 1453
Avvisi and the genius of the paragraph
Venice, republic of news
Intelligence of everything, and the labours of the post
The first printing of news
To be a merchant
The materials of print from the occasional pamphlet to the serial gazette
Bundling the news
The places of news
The peripheries of Europe
A babel of tongues : the languages of news
Imagining news and the noise it makes
Trust : reading true, false and fake news
Managing the news
The diffusion of printed periodical news
Conclusion: Endings and beginnings.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 503-570) and index.
ISBN:
0241188539
9780241188538
OCLC:
1455107425
Publisher Number:
CIPO000217170

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