The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe by Joad Raymond Wren - ISBN: 9780241188538
Hardcover
Europe, buzzing with news: birth of modern media revealed.

The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe

$95.99

  • Hardcover

    624 pages

  • Release Date

    14 October 2025

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Summary

An epic history of the birth of news in Europe

“Highly ambitious and impressive… a rich, multifaceted and thought-provoking book” Noel Malcolm, Times Literary Supplement

News moves. It is a battle, a scandal, a disaster. It is a letter, a newspaper, a proclamation. News is a material thing, but also something between us, something we take into us and feel.

This book tells the story of news from the sunset of the Middle Ages to the rise of mass media in modern times. It…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780241188538
ISBN-10:0241188539
Author:Joad Raymond Wren
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Allen Lane
Format:Hardcover
Number of Pages:624
Release Date:14 October 2025
Weight:1.06kg
Dimensions:241mm x 164mm x 39mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Bold in conception, magisterial in its command of vast swathes of evidence and brimming with clever ideas, it is a formidable accomplishment – John Adamson * Literary Review *
Highly ambitious and impressive … here is a book that anyone and everyone interested in early-modern Europe will enjoy reading, and from which they will learn a huge amount – Noel Malcolm * Times Literary Supplement *
Monumental and mesmerising … Raymond Wren has produced a transformative work – Peter Marshall * History Today *
Capacious in structure, monumental in volume – Minoo Dinshaw * Spectator *
Utopian is the ambition to write a history of news, that most quicksilver of commodities, and Raymond Wren has knowingly attempted the impossible … The Great Exchange must be counted a triumphant success – Daniel Johnson * The Critic *

About The Author

Joad Raymond Wren

Joad Raymond is a writer and historian of early modern Europe who has taught at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, East Anglia, Paris-Sorbonne and Queen Mary University of London. His previous books include The Invention of the Newspaper, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, Milton’s Angels and, as editor, Making the News, The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture- Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1600, News Networks in Early Modern Europe and The Complete Works of John Milton- Latin Defences.

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