This fascinating book traces the evolution of the newspaper from roughly 1400 to 1800, taking us from a time when current affairs were the preserve of a powerful elite maintaining an expensive network of messengers to the point when news had become an established commercial commodity.

Even in the days when monks were practically the only people recording history, Pettegree sees the emergence of what we would today recognise as journalistic ethics, and follows the roles played by sensationalism, narrative and public trust as they develop. He explains the significance of the Reformation and the pamphleteering craze, why it took newspapers a century to catch on and how they only found a "strong editorial voice" in the period of the French and American revolutions. Both in-depth and accessible, it's a story about the democratisation of communications as much as it's about newspapers, and his well-presented research reveals a huge amount about the social and economic conditions of the period.