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George Bernard Shaw’s famous spelling of “fish” as “ghoti”—the first two letters pronounced as the last two in “tough,” the middle letter as in “women,” and the last two as in “nation.”
Masters of the Word
William J. Bernstein, the acclaimed author of A Splendid Exchange, explores the history of media in his latest book, beginning thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia with the invention of writing. The world's ancient empires were founded on this groundbreaking instrument. When Phoenician traders brought their alphabet to Greece, literacy exploded, spawning theatre and democracy.
But it isn't simply new communication technologies that have altered the globe; it is also access to them. Religious discontent was sparked by vernacular bibles, but it wasn't until the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg's printing press brought down the price of books by 97 percent that the Reformation was ignited. The Industrial Revolution made it possible for knowledge to travel faster and further than it had previously, but it also consolidated power in the hands of individuals who owned radio and television stations, major newspapers, and, eventually, authoritarian regimes. With the rise of the mobile Internet in the twenty-first century, media power has once again extended, and the globe is more linked and free than ever before.
Masters of the Word is an immensely entertaining and instructive book that will revolutionize the way you think about technology, human history, and power.
George Bernard Shaw’s famous spelling of “fish” as “ghoti”—the first two letters pronounced as the last two in “tough,” the middle letter as in “women,” and the last two as in “nation.”
