Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History
This sweeping, although selective, historical narrative by award-winning financial historian Bernstein (A Splendid Exchange, 2008) elucidates in highly readable fashion the role of “media”—in which he includes advances from ancient alphabets to movable type to twenty-first-century technology—in shaping civilization and determining democratic versus despotic tendencies. Bernstein’s thesis that “power accrues to the literate” should not be taken simplistically; his larger arguments are learned and elegantly made. His occasional invocation of modern phenomena in a nonmodern context (at one point, in discussing events two millennia past, referencing the Second Amendment) lend charm and clarity to what might have otherwise been dauntingly erudite. Instead, Bernstein offers an accessible, quite enjoyable, and highly informative read that will hold surprises even for those familiar with some of the history he covers. --Mark Levine