'Knowledge is Power'

"There may be no better way to comprehend the deluge of daily information under which we exist than to turn the clock back to early America. Richard D Brown's analysis of information networks in New England and Tidewater Virginia provides the context that places our current information explosion in perspective. A professor of history at the University of Connecticut, Brown derives the bulk of his data from selected diaries, journals, and letters....The book is an immensely readable portrait of early Americans, the product of a writer in control of his material. it is a story of both the small and great, engaged in the formation and diffusion of information." Journalism Quarterly