"Today video clips and photojournalism dominate our news sources, but in the second half of the nineteenth century, the pictorial newspaper brought events and personalities alive for a hungry public. In this wonderfully illustrated book, Joshua Brown shows that the wood engravings in the illustrated newspapers of Gilded Age America were more than quaint predecessors to our own sophisticated media.

As he tells the history and traces the influence of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, with relevant asides on Harper's Weekly, the New York Daily Graphic and others, Brown recaptures the complexity and richness of pictorial reporting. He finds these images to be significant barometers for gauging how the general public perceived pivotal events and crises - the Civil War, Reconstruction, important labor battles, and more - and uses them as a rewarding source for understanding the era."--BOOK JACKET.