Richard Bauman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, of Folklore, and of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. He is author most recently of A World of Others' Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality and (with Charles L. Briggs) of Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. He is editor (with Patricia Sawin and Inta Gale Carpenter) of Reflections on the Folklife Festival: An Ethnography of Participant Experience.Patrick Feaster is Cofounder and Lead Researcher at First Sounds Initiative and former Media Preservation Specialist for Indiana University's Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative. He is a specialist in the history, culture, and preservation of early sound media and a three-time Grammy nominee.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on TranscriptionListen to the Records1. Introduction: "A Most Valuable Medium"2. "Come in Here and Hear Them Speak!": Campaign Speeches and Political Publics, with Patrick Feaster3. "Accordin' to the Gospel of Etymology": Aural Blackface and New African American Poetics4. "We Always Enjoy a Good Story": From Monologue to Audio Theater5. "Talking Machine Story Teller": Cal Stewart and the Remediation of Storytelling6. "Somebody Stole My Tune!": Charles Ross Taggart and Country Communicability7. "I Don't See No Mans": Bridging the Schizophonic GapDiscography, by Patrick FeasterReferencesIndex

Bauman is a master of his craft. A Most Valuable Medium enables us to benefit from his vast accumulated knowledge and insights as he explores the early world of phonographic recordings of spoken genres, from street-corner sales pitches to country store tall tales. His is a decidedly important contribution to understanding the rise of broadcasting, which has been widely assumed to begin with the advent of radio in 1920. It is also a major contribution to our understanding of the discourse processes of decontextualization and circulation that are central to the constitution and maintenance of modern public spheres.- Greg Urban, University of Pennsylvania This spirited and well-researched book is a must-read for many audiences, including scholars and students of media history, media anthropology, and sound studies; linguistic anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers of performance; and Americanists and historians of various stripes.- Michael Lempert - University of Michigan (Journal of Folklore Research Reviews) Bauman's status as eminent anthropologist and author of books on cross-cultural intertextuality and language ideologies situates his discussions within a broader world of inquiry and his mechanisms for analyzing the behaviors of history feel current and intellectually rigorous, an obvious outcome of experience.- Andrew Justice - University of Southern California (Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal)