This unique history of telegraphic news gathering and news flow evaluates the effect of the innovative technology on the evolution of the concept of news and journalistic practices. It also addresses problems of technological innovation and diffusion. Menahem Blondheim's main concern, however, is the development of oligopoly in business and the control revolution in American society. He traces the discovery of timely news as a commodity, presenting a lively and detailed account of the emergence of the New York Associated Press (AP) as the first private sector national monopoly in the United States and Western Union as the first industrial one.

Invented in the 1830's, the telegraph soon became indispensable. By 1851 there were more than 50 companies providing telegraphic service in the United States alone. The telegraph played a pivotal role in warfare beginning with the American Civil War, featured prominently in the creation of the first large American corporation, Western Union, and made possible long distance communication with the laying of the transatlantic cable. This book describes the global impact of the telegraph from its advent to its eventual eclipse by the telephone four decades later.

This book is the third installment in a series of volumes looking at episodes in American economic history from a public choice perspective. Each chapter discusses citizens, special interests, and government officials responding to economic incentives in both markets and politics. In doing so, the book provides fresh insights into important periods of American history, from the Rhode Island’s 1788 Referendum on the U.S. Constitution and the political influence of women’s clubs in the United States. The volume features economic historians such as Ruth Wallis Herndon, junior public choice scholars such as Jayme Lemke and Leo Krasnozhon, and political scientists such as Michael Faber. This volume will be useful for researchers and students interested in economics, history, political science, economic history, public choice, and political economy.

Richard A. Schwarzlose's long-awaited two-volume The Nation's Newsbrokers makes a major contribution to the history of journalism in the United States. Schwarzlose traces the development of the Associated Press and the predecessors of United Press International from scattered beginnings in the 1840s to their emergence as a mature national institution in the World War I era. In Volume 1, Schwarzlose analyzes the problems of communication and transportation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and examines the news media before and during the Civil War.