In The Networked Wilderness, Matt Cohen examines communications systems in early New England and finds that, surprisingly, struggles over information technology were as important as theology, guns, germs, or steel in shaping the early colonization of North America. Colonists in New England have generally been viewed as immersed in a Protestant culture of piety and alphabetic literacy. At the same time, many scholars have insisted that the culture of the indigenous peoples of the region was a predominantly oral culture. But what if, Cohen posits, we thought about media and technology beyond the terms of orality and literacy?

Reconceptualizing aural and inscribed communication as a spectrum, The Networked Wilderness bridges the gap between the history of the book and Native American systems of communication. Cohen reveals that books, paths, recipes, totems, and animals and their sounds all took on new interactive powers as the English negotiated the well-developed informational trails of the Algonquian East Coast and reported their experiences back to Europe. Native and English encounters forced all parties to think of each other as audiences for any event that might become a kind of "publication."

Using sources ranging from Thomas Morton's Maypole festival to the architecture of today's Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Cohen shows that the era before the printing press came to New England was one of extraordinary fertility for communications systems in America.

Norman Corwin is regarded as the most acclaimed creative artist of radio’s Golden Age (mid 1930s to late 1940s). Corwin worked as a producer for CBS at a time when radio was the centerpiece of American family life. His programs brought high moments to the medium during a period when exceptional creativity and world crisis shaped its character and conviction. Bannerman’s book is more than biography: it is also social history—the story of network radio, its great achievements and ultimate decline. Many of Corwin’s programs are considered radio classics. During World War II his programs energized the people and marshaled morale. We Hold These Truths, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the American Bill of Rights, was broadcast eight days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and On a Note of Triumph, a VE-Day special for CBS, marked the historic culmination of a momentous conflict. Bannerman’s work is a portrayal of a remarkable man, who led an influential fight for the art and integrity of broadcasting, who endured unfounded accusations during the blacklisting period of the McCarthy era, and who by his dedication accomplished significant programs of historic dimensions.