Together, the media and the military have turned the 20th century into a spectacular but deadly show. How precisely this has happened, how it works and why, is the subject of this book. It offers a history of modern communications that exposes the connection between militarism and the evolution of the media industry. In this account, the history of modern media emerges clearly as a history of state control, wielded to discipline internal populations and combat external enemies. Mattelart demonstrates that in such a history, the use of media by the leisure and entertainment industry is only secondary, derivative of a media politics that is statist through and through. The book moves from the rise of the postal stamp to international telegraphy to the world press, and finds in each the traces of government intervention serving the specific needs of belligerency. Armand Mattelart is the author of, among other books, "Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture", "Advertising International" and "Rethinking Media Theory".