In the twenty-first century, mass media corporations are often seen as profit-hungry money machines. It was a different world in the early days of mass communication in America. Faith in Reading tells the remarkable story of the noncommercial religious origins of our modern media culture. In the early nineteenth century, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to reach everyone in America through the medium of print. Though they were modern businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses but nonprofit societies committed to the publication of...

In the twenty-first century, mass media corporations are often seen as profit-hungry money machines. It was a different world in the early days of mass communication in America. Faith in Reading tells the remarkable story of the noncommercial religious origins of our modern media culture. In the early nineteenth century, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to reach everyone in America through the medium of print. Though they were modern businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses but nonprofit societies committed to the publication of...

Newspapers do more than provide information. They enter into the process of forming communities, from voluntary associations to cities to nation-states.

Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of American journalism, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press.

Nord perceives the daily press as an...