Hanno Hardt has thoroughly revised and expanded his ‘pre-history’ of communication research in the United States. With the notable addition of Karl Marx’s journalism-focused writings and a new foreword by James W. Carey, this edition covers intellectual contributions from several German theorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as first-generation U.S. sociologists who were influenced by this scholarship. A new concluding chapter explores the continuing influence of German social thought and the contemporary shift of paradigms in U.S. communication research, including approaches such as critical (Marxist) and cultural studies.