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\"Communications and Humanity advances a new theory of media that explains the origins and impact of different forms of communication - speech, writing, print, electronic devices, and the Internet - on human history in the long term. New media are \"pulled\" into widespread use by broad historical trends and these media, once in widespread use, \"push\" social institutions and beliefs in predictable directions. This view allows us to see for the first time what is truly new about the Internet, what is not, and where it is taking us\"--Provided by publisher.

A History of Communications advances a theory of media that explains the origins and impact of different forms of communication - speech, writing, print, electronic devices and the Internet - on human history in the long term. New media are 'pulled' into widespread use by broad historical trends and these media, once in widespread use, 'push' social institutions and beliefs in predictable directions. This view allows us to see for the first time what is truly new about the Internet, what is not, and where it is taking us.

The book presents the first English edition of \"On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich\" by Grigorii Kotoshikhin. This is the only native source describing the character of the seventeenth-century Russian state and society. It offers a unique and detailed picture of the nature of Russian \"autocracy\", the life at the tsar's court, social mores of the nobles and commoners of those times, military affairs, diplomatic relations, etc. The book is a veritable ethnographic encyclopedia of early Russian life.With broad commentaries and supporting materials provided by the translator, Benjamin Uroff, and the editor, Marshall Poe, it provides an invaluable source for understanding XVII-century Muscovite Russia.

Many Americans and Europeans have for centuries viewed Russia as a despotic country in which people are inclined to accept suffering and oppression. What are the origins of this stereotype of Russia as a society fundamentally apart from nations in the West, and how accurate is it? In the first book devoted to answering these questions, Marshall T. Poe traces the roots of today's perception of Russia and its people to the eyewitness descriptions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travelers. His fascinating account-the most complete review of early modern European writings about Russia ever undertaken-explores how the image of \"Russian tyranny\" took hold in the popular imagination and eventually became the basis for the notion of \"Oriental Despotism\" first set forth by Montesquieu. Poe, the preeminent scholar of these valuable primary sources, carefully assesses their reliability. He argues convincingly that although the foreigners exaggerated the degree of Russian \"slavery,\" they accurately described their encounters and correctly concluded that the political culture of Muscovite autocracy was unlike that of European kingship. With his findings, Poe challenges the notion that all Europeans projected their own fantasies onto Russia. Instead, his evidence suggests that many early travelers produced, in essence, reliable ethnographies, not works of exotic \"Orientalism.\" Many Americans and Europeans have for centuries viewed Russia as a despotic country in which people are inclined to accept suffering and oppression. What are the origins of this stereotype of Russia as a society fundamentally apart from nations in the West, and how accurate is it? In the first book devoted to answering these questions, Marshall T. Poe traces the roots of today's perception of Russia and its people to the eyewitness descriptions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travelers. His fascinating account-the most complete review of early modern European writings about Russia ever undertaken-explores how the image of \"Russian tyranny\" took hold in the popular imagination and eventually became the basis for the notion of \"Oriental Despotism\" first set forth by Montesquieu. Poe, the preeminent scholar of these valuable primary sources, carefully assesses their reliability. He argues convincingly that although the foreigners exaggerated the degree of Russian \"slavery,\" they accurately described their encounters and correctly concluded that the political culture of Muscovite autocracy was unlike that of European kingship. With his findings, Poe challenges the notion that all Europeans projected their own fantasies onto Russia. Instead, his evidence suggests that many early travelers produced, in essence, reliable ethnographies, not works of exotic \"Orientalism.\"

[...] in truth no one knew because no one seriously studied the question. [...] it was just as easy to argue, as the New York Times did in 1923, that Prohibition had increased the level of drunkenness among college students. According to Senator Arthur Vandenberg, \"If young men are to be drafted at eighteen years of age to fight for their government, they ought to be entitled to vote at eighteen years of age for the kind of government which they are best satisfied to fight.\" According to Senator Joshua Lee, soldiers under 2 1 needed to be protected from drinking by their older brothers-in-arms.\\n If that person, knowing that even more draconian consequences will follow (and everyone does), gets a second dui then it make sense to say that they certainly cannot or will not drink safely.

First Published in 2004.Modernizing Muscovy is a comprehensive account of seventeenth-century Russian history.It rejects the traditional interpretation of this era as the twilight of the Russian Middle Ages.

The book presents the first English edition of “On Russia in the Reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich” by Grigorii Kotoshikhin. This is the only native source describing the character of the seventeenth-century Russian state and society. It offers a unique and detailed picture of the nature of Russian “autocracy”, the life at the tsar’s court, social mores of the nobles and commoners of those times, military affairs, diplomatic relations, etc. The book is a veritable ethnographic encyclopedia of early Russian life. With broad commentaries and supporting materials provided by the translator, Benjamin Uroff, and the editor, Marshall Poe, it provides an invaluable source for understanding XVII-century Muscovite Russia.