本书为一综合性的著述，注重纸和印刷在中国和世界文化史中的地位、作用和影响。范围包括历史上的每一个时代，上自二者最早出现，下迄19世纪末期，即手工业时代结束为止。全书分十章：首章绪论为全书的提要；纸和印刷（包括制墨和装订）各占三章；传播和影响也占三章，其中最后一章以纸和印刷对中国和世界文明的功能和影响作为结论。全书结构简明而有系统，内容分配平均，数据包括实物和文献，另有插图174幅，附录《中国印刷史书目》千余条，可供研究者作进一步的参考。

In the mid-1910s, what historians call the "Golden Age of Chinese Capitalism" began, accompanied by a technological transformation that included the drastic expansion of China’s "Gutenberg revolution." Gutenberg in Shanghai is a brilliant examination of this process. It finds the origins of that revolution in the country’s printing industries of the late imperial period and analyzes their subsequent development in the Republican era.
Under diverse social, political, and economic influences, this technological and cultural revolution saw woodblock printing replaced with Western mechanical processes. This book, which relies on documents previously unavailable to both Western and Chinese researchers, demonstrates how Western technology and evolving traditional values resulted in the birth of a unique form of print capitalism whose influence on Chinese culture was far-reaching and irreversible. Its conclusion contests scholarly arguments that view China’s technological development as slowed by culture, or that interpret Chinese modernity as mere cultural continuity.
A vital reevaluation of Chinese modernity, Gutenberg in Shanghai will appeal to scholars of Chinese history. Likewise, it will be enthusiastically received by specialists in cultural studies, political science, sociology, the history of the book, and the anthropology of science and technology.

Although the importance of the advent of printing for the Western world has long been recognized, it was Elizabeth Eisenstein, in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject. This illustrated and abridged edition gives a stimulating survey of the communications revolution of the fifteenth century. After summarizing the initial changes introduced by the establishment of printing shops, it goes on to discuss how printing affected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. This new edition includes a new essay discussing recent controversies provoked by the first edition and reaffirms the thesis that the advent of printing entailed a communications revolution. Fully-illustrated and annotated, the book argues that the cumulative processes set in motion with the advent of printing are likely to persist despite the recent development of new communications technologies.

早在印刷术发明之前，人们就渴望信息。在前工业时代，人们通过谈话、八卦、庆祝活动、布道和公告来收集和分享新闻。印刷时代催生了小册子、期刊和最早的新闻纸，将新闻社区从地方扩展到世界。本书追踪了1400年到1800年四个世纪以来多个欧洲国家的新闻史，展示了控制新闻的力量，新闻在政治、宗教改革和社会事件中的角色，新闻的娱乐性和时效性，记者的可信度，以及人们在推开新闻的世界之窗后发生的改变。
今天，在一个被信息淹没的时代，人们如何在这种信息规模中相互沟通？读者或将在书中得到新的思考。本书荣获2015年哈佛大学金匠奖。