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Moving book history in a new direction, (Oxford University Press, Oct. 13, 2024), by James M. Brophy, Francis H. Squire Professor of History, examines publishers as brokers of Central Europe's political public sphere. 

The narrow perimeters of political communication in the late-absolutist states of Prussia and Austria in the nineteenth century curtailed the open market of ideas. The publishing industry contested this information order, working both within and outside legal parameters to create a modern public sphere. Publishers created international print markets, translated new texts, launched new journals, supported outspoken authors and experimented with popular formats. Most of all, they contested censorship with finesse and resolve, thereby undermining the aim of Prussia and Austria to criminalize democratic thought. By packaging dissent through popular media, publishers cultivated broad readerships, promoted political literacy and refashioned citizenship ideals.

Their expansion of print markets, their cat-and-mouse game with censors, and their ingenuity in packaging political commentary sheds light on the production and reception of dissent. Against the backdrop of censorship and police surveillance, the successes and failures of these citizens of print tell us much about the age鈥檚 civil society and Central Europe's tortuous pathway to political modernization. 

As political actors, intellectual midwives and cultural mediators, publishers speak to a broad range of scholarly interests. The book cuts across a range of disciplines to engage social and political historians as well as scholars of publishing, literary criticism, cultural studies, translation and the public sphere.