Mark Sunderman

“the stereotypical wealthy, swaggering “ugly Roman” soon became an object of Greek hatred.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“In the early fifth century BC, a roll of papyrus, consisting of about twenty sheets, cost between one and three drachmas—that is, one to three days’ wages for a semiskilled worker.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“As populations grow beyond Dunbar’s number, face-to-face contact no longer suffices to maintain political control. At this point, writing supplies the best mechanism for communicating among large numbers of people, and power naturally accrues to the literate. Consequently, societies with high rates of literacy, such as Athens, tend to have more smoothly running republics than those with low rates, such as the late Roman one.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“David Sarnoff had predicted, the radio became the ornate mahogany god of the American living room: there were three million sets in 1924, thirty million in 1936, and fifty million by 1940, by which time a simple radio could be had for less than ten dollars.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet