Making Capitalism without Capitalists offers a new theory of the transition to capitalism. By telling the story of how capitalism is being built without capitalists in post-communist Central Europe it guides us towards a deeper understanding of the origins of modern capitalism.

While the newspaper op-ed page, the Sunday morning political talk shows on television, and the evening cable-news television lineup have an obvious and growing influence in American politics and political communication, social scientists and media scholars tend to be broadly critical of the rise of organized punditry during the 20th century without ever providing a close empirical analysis. What is the nature of the contemporary space of opinion? How has it developed historically? What kinds of people speak in this space? What styles of writing and speech do they use? What types of authority...