The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

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Cambridge University Press, Sep 30, 1980 - Design - 794 pages
Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.
 

Contents

The unacknowledged revolution
3
Defining the initial shift some features of print culture
43
CLASSICAL AND CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
161
resetting the stage for
303
truths recast 329 4 Resetting the stage for the Reformation 367
367
Catholic south to Protestant north 403 7 Aspects of the new book
422
s Introduction problems of periodization
453
some new trends
520
Resetting the stage for the Copernican Revolution
575
Sponsorship and censorship of scientific publication
636
Scripture and nature transformed
683
Bibliographical index
709
General index
769
Copyright

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About the author (1980)

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein was born Elizabeth Ann Lewisohn on October 11, 1923 in Manhattan, New York. She received a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1944 and master's and doctoral degrees in history from Harvard University. She taught at American University in Washington before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, where she taught until her retirement in 1988. She wrote several books during her lifetime including The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, The First Professional Revolutionist, Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press From the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution, and Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending. She died on January 31, 2016 at the age of 92.