reviews Book Reviews 97 appended glossary. His overview of “disparate treatment” on pages 60 and 61 is an excellent example of the skill with which he summarizes laws and prin- ciples governing personnel matters. As part of his discussion, Baldwin offers a number of useful lists contain- ing important precepts, tendencies to avoid, warning signs of potential prob- lems, steps to be taken under certain circumstances, and so on. Particularly noteworthy lists are “Steps to Take be- fore Terminating an Employee,” the summary of traits that employees like least about their managers and the at- titudes necessary to be a good man- ager. In short, this is an exemplary work with which I can find few faults. Of course, a handbook dealing with legal matters will inevitably include some information that becomes outdated quickly. For example, Baldwin tells us the minimum wage is $4.25 per hour, but subsequent to his book’s publication, Congress has passed a minimum wage increase. Nev- ertheless, in my view the important management and legal principles and guidance the author dispenses will never be obsolete.—W. Bede Mitchell, Ap- palachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. Lacy, Dan. From Grunts to Gigabytes: Com- munications and Society. Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1996. 193p. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0-252-02228-9); $13.95 pa- per (ISBN 0-252-06531-X). LC 95- 32512. Few would find fault with the statement that begins Dan Lacy’s latest book on communications and society: “the pat- terns of skills and technologies with which humans have been able to com- municate have profoundly affected the societies in which they have lived.” From the moment the first words were spoken between two humans, modes of communication in society have affected the creation and distribution of power, the structuring of society, and “our in- ternal perceptions of reality.” From Grunts to Gigabytes is a concise, well-written synthesis of what is known of the emergence of communication systems in Western society. Beginning with the human capacity for speech and its transformation into communities held together by orality, Lacy traces the history of communication in European and Anglo-American cultures along a single line: from oral to written culture, and from writing to printing, and the emergence of new media in the late 1800s through the twentieth century. He is at his best in his lucid discussion of the impact of print on Western society and its endurance during the modern era of audiovisual and electronic me- dia. Of greater consequence, From Grunts to Gigabytes is more of a provocative treatise on the relationship between communication and power in society than it is a history of the book. Lacy’s portrayal of the impact that new and emergent technologies have had on the public sphere are central to his thesis. From one chapter to the next, he illus- trates how power is associated with ac- cess and control of new forms of com- munication. Although he does not allege that access and control of communica- tion systems necessarily create power, there is a convincing argument pre- sented for the centrality of communi- cation as a tool for empowerment, and this is evident throughout his analysis of the interaction between communica- tion and public policy. For instance, Lacy considers the relationship between church and state in fifteenth- and six- teenth-century Europe in regulating and licensing printers and, by extension, controlling what was actually published. When discussing the appearance of audiovisual media in the twentieth cen- tury, he also uses government (Federal Communications Commission) and in- dustry (Motion Picture Association of 98 College & Research Libraries January 1997 America) to illustrate how public and corporate sector policy regulates radio, television, and movies. Although Lacy’s comfort in his knowl- edge of the communication industry, particularly with regard to interactions between publishing and other media, is in evidence throughout this work, there are several important shortcomings. Without any explanation, much of the corpus of recent writings in communi- cation studies, whether by media crit- ics (such as Ben Bagdikian or Herbert Schiller) or researchers and critical theo- rists, has been given little attention in the construction of the author ’s argu- ments. This is particularly ironic given their focus on critiquing media monopo- lies, power, and hegemony. Also, in his discussion of computer-based commu- nication, Lacy gives scant attention to the impact of networked communica- tion in general and of the Internet in particular. Given the breadth of recent literature in this area, his arguments are somewhat constrained by his focus on a relatively limited range of informa- tion technologies. Finally, Lacy’s thesis on the history of communication in society rests on his interpretation of the idea of progress. As useful as his work is for understand- ing the development of communication in Europe and the United States, it is less relevant to understanding commu- nication systems in other cultures. Early on, he engages in a troubling discus- sion in which he distinguishes between oral and written cultures. “In oral soci- eties,” Lacy asserts, “only a few works could be so frequently performed, like those of Homer, as to acquire a more or less stable and recognized identity. It would be difficult to conceive of an extensive body of separate, individually recognized works in an oral culture. Writing made possible the existence of many hundreds, even thousands, of identifiable works, fixed in form, usually of identifiable authorship, and self-consciously created in recognized genres.” Although society at large has clearly benefited from the transcribed narratives, tales, and histories of oral cultures, along with other ways of pre- serving and communicating culture (through art, music, and other forms of expression), Lacy’s contention under- values the presence of sophisticated systems of communication among di- verse cultures by placing a higher pre- mium on the written record. This last point has two consequences. First, toward the end of the book Lacy expresses grave concerns over the “in- formation disenfranchised,” arguing a widely held belief that many people— even whole societies—are information poor because they lack access to avail- able information within the mainstream of communication systems. (Alterna- tively, resolution of this dilemma may begin with analysis of such populations through a different lens, one that is fo- cused on understanding the nature of their methods of communication.) Sec- ond, the gigabytes of new and emerg- ing computer-based technologies are proving to have a much greater capac- ity than print to accommodate different forms of communication among cul- tures, particularly where such cultures rely on oral or visual transmission of knowledge. At the end of his book, Lacy writes, “Successive advances in communica- tions technology and skills have given us an almost inconceivable power both to master and shape reality and share the capacity benignly throughout soci- ety. How we use that power and how broadly we share it will depend on our wisdom and will.” Lacy has, in the end, contributed to our conversation on this important issue.—William C. Welburn, University of Iowa, Iowa City. Reilly, James M., Douglas W. Nishi-mura, and Edward Zinn. 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