List of figures -- Acknowledgments -- 1. A traveling clerk goes to the bookstores -- 2. The library of public information -- 3. Maps are strange -- 4. Blood right and merit -- 5. The freedom of the city -- 6. Cultural custody, cultural literacy -- 7. Nation -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary
Considering the social processes that drove the information explosion of the 1600s, this is an account of the conversion of the public from an object of state surveillance into a subject of self-knowledge. It shows that public texts projected a national collectivity characterized by access to markets, mobility, sociability, and self-fashioning
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-308) and index
