JoAnne Yates, Deputy Dean and Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is the author of Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management, also published by Johns Hopkins.

[This book's] timeliness is remarkable. Now that the Western system of responsible (that is, profit-based) production has emerged as the victor over command economies, the secrets of how we did it may replace foreign relations as 'topic A' at conferences, and historians who continue to reject 'material civilization' as unworthy of genuine scholars will do so at their peril. American Historical Review A superb historical analysis of the philosophical and technological forces that led to the development of communication genres and processes in the modern American corporation. Journal of Business Communication

• List of IllustrationsForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Transformation of Internal Communication1. material Methods and the Functions of Internal Communication2. Communication Technology and the Growth of Internal Communication3. Genres of Internal Communication4. The Illinois Central before 1887: Communication for Compliance and Efficiency7. Du Pont's First Century: Conservatism in Family and Firm8. Du Pont, 1902-1920: Radical Change from a New GenerationConclusionNotesA Note on Archival SourcesIndex