Gutenberg's Europe: The Book and the Invention of Western Modernity (Second ed., revised)

L’Europe de Gutenberg. Le livre et l’invention de la modernite occidentale, XIIIe–XVIe siècle

Translated to Russian by I. Kushnareva; under scientific editing by A. Markova. Moscow: Gaidar Institute Press, 2021. – 496 p.

ISBN 978‑5‑93255‑597-2

Important phases of the transformation of society are accompanied by parallel transformations of the systems of public communication – what we call the media. The first" media " revolution in the West was Gutenberg's invention of printing in the mid-15th century. This book shows how the growing demand for written documents in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries triggers a logic of change that will culminate in Gutenberg. The 15th century is the "time of startups": capitalists invest in research and development to debug and use innovative technologies, including printing. The main features of this first "media" revolution are described below: the growth of technology, the organization of the modern literary field, the development of supervision and censorship, and the invention of the process of mediatization itself. This new reading of the Gutenberg Revolution not only provides a better understanding of a number of issues related to the cultural history of the Western world, but also draws many comparisons with the most relevant phenomena.