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Richard John Discusses "Network Nation" on C-Span

Richard R. John, author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications—recently  published by Harvard University Press (May 2010)—was interviewed about his book for C-Span at the April OAH meeting. John, who is a professor in the Journalism School at Columbia University, is the current president of the Business History Conference.
A brief excerpt:
We sometimes tell the history of telegraph and telephone focusing on technology and economics; and that's really not what happened.  In fact the telegraph and telephone both developed in a political economy in which government regulation was really essential to the way the business strategies of the key players evolved. . . . Regulation really mattered in American history.
John is the author or editor of several other books, most notably Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse.
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