Inspired by Madison s observation, Mark Lloyd has crafted a complex and powerful assessment of the relationship between communications and democracy in the United States. In Prologue to a Farce, he argues that citizens political capabilities depend on broad public access to media technologies, but that the U.S. communications environment has become unfairly dominated by corporate interests.

Drawing on a wealth of historical sources, Lloyd demonstrates that despite the persistent hope that a new technology (from the telegraph to the Internet) will rise to serve the needs of the...