Newspaper

“This book is an unusual, imaginative braiding together of two countries – the United States and South Africa – and two streams of history: the growth of democracy, and the growth of a probing, vibrant, defiant press. Maggie Messitt has a fine eye for the telling detail, the shocking fact, the unsung hero or heroine.” —Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022)

“In these very challenging times all over the world, we need works like those featured in Maggie Messitt’s Newspaper, for they give me and will surely give other readers the hope we all need to keep on keepin’ on!” —Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives (2022)

“Messitt’s work reveals that from Fredrick Douglas to George Floyd, newspapers serve as not only “the first draft of history” but also a compelling outlet for historical, discursive analysis.”” —Tribal College Journal

Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, Director of Film & Media Studies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. Bogost is author or co-author of ten books, including Alien Phenomenology (2012) and Play Anything (2016).

Christopher Schaberg is Director of the Program in Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness (2017), The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth (2018), Searching for the Anthropocene (2019), Pedagogy of the Depressed (2021), and Adventure: An Argument for Limits (2023), all published by Bloomsbury. He is also the founding co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons book series.