Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of U.S. Media. Janet M. Cramer. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 296 pp. $89.95 hbk. $39.95 pbk.

The back cover of Janet Cramer’s Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of U.S. Media says that the book “offers a cultural history of media in the United States, shifting the lens of media history from media developments and evolution to a focus on changes in culture and society, and emphasizing how media shaped and were shaped by societal trends, policies, and cultural shifts.” For those of us who blend cultural studies with history in both research and teaching, this suggests an alternative to traditional approaches found in many media history texts.

Cramer’s book is organized conceptually, and is divided into four major sections: Media and Government, Media and Commerce, Media and Community, and a Conclusion, each subdivided into chapters that cover a broad span of time. For example, Media and Government begins with a discussion of the First Amendment and how it developed in response to earlier Western European ideas about monarchical control of information, then moves on to a chapter on censorship in wartime, and ends with more recent debates over free speech. Media and Commerce discusses the emergence of the market model and the Penny Press, as well as the rise of newspapers as an industry. How audiences changed in the wake of emerging broadcast technologies and entertainment media are also included here. [Read more...]