Steven Carl Smith presents a compelling study of the origins of the New York print trade in An Empire of Print. The monograph illustrates the significance of print business in the early Republic, focusing on how individual printers and booksellers ‘blurred the boundaries between the regional and national markets and helped build up the nation in print’ (p. 182). In doing so, Smith provides an urban history of the publishing business in New York, complementing similar research done for other American cities, such as Philadelphia. This is a story of New York publishing through the lives of specific printers, employing the case-studies of four publishers. These cases allow an insightful portrayal of the various sides and evolution of the business of print in New York. Smith presents the difficulties that printers encountered in the early Republic, the lack of materials and labour, the need to establish new networks, the vicissitudes of war. The book charts the change in the role of publishers from highly skilled printers to booksellers not actually engaged in the mechanical aspects of the printing press, while industrial publishing transformed pressmen and printers from highly skilled artisans into wage earners.

It is also a story of how New York was transformed by the business of print, through the development of national networks of print. An Empire of Print shows the significance of New York publishing for the establishment of a national circulation circuit. Publishers such as William Gordon and James Divington sought to cultivate a national readership by getting subscribers for their printed texts from as far as the Caribbean, Florida, Connecticut and North Carolina. Evert Duyckinck created a vast distribution network throughout the east coast, by selling cheap steady sellers rather than publishing new texts. His network was so expansive that between 1813 and 1829 he ‘worked with 24 booksellers in twenty cities across twelve states’ (p. 159). National literary fairs, first organized in New York in 1805, aimed to showcase the accomplishments of American printers. Smith persuasively shows how through such joint literary enterprises, booksellers sought to create a national network, aimed at selling books, but also protecting their common interests through organized lobbying and protest. Smith focuses on petitions by booksellers and printers pressuring the government into pursuing protectionist policies in favour of American manufacturers. The collaboration between printers and publishers on this issue is surprising: whereas printers would benefit from protectionist policies, booksellers would benefit from unfettered international trade. Smith's research, however, shows that in the early eighteenth century both booksellers and printers were more interested in establishing a national ‘empire of print’.

An Empire of Print examines how printing influenced the politics of the fledgling Republic, by showing the print trade's role in supporting or subverting the Revolution and the Republic. Smith shows that even though publishers such as Samuel Loudon were willing to produce publications that disagreed with their own politics, they could still influence their contents. Loudon printed a rebuttal of Paine's Common Sense but simultaneously charged the author with ensuring that the book did not reject ‘the glorious Cause’ (p. 22). Smith also examines the publishing trajectory of William Gordon's History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States. Envisaged as a historiography of the Revolution, for which Gordon received official backing and documents, its initial publication in London forced Gordon to make alterations that accommodated a more Anglophile reading. Smith shows that even though the publication of this text by New York publishers with no changes could be seen as a blow to the rhetoric of the Revolution, the model of subscription used facilitated the creation of a national readership irrespective of the text's politics. In perhaps the best chapter of the book, Smith's case-study of John Ward Fenno examines the role of publishing in supporting Federalism, not only through publications, but also through the use of space. Smith's narrative shows that Fenno moved his bookstore to Broadway in order to provide a gathering place for Federalists, and to act as a counterpoint to Hoquet Caritat's republican and Francophile bookstore in the same area. This is a story of how ‘literary politics influenced the development of the new nation's publishing trade’ (p. 86).

Smith's An Empire of Print provides an insightful and painstakingly researched analysis of the publishing trade in New York, utilizing extensive archival research in papers of booksellers, newspapers, advertisements, petitions, lists of subscribers, letters, book reviews and booksellers’ catalogues. The case-study approach could be seen as somewhat restrictive, but Smith interweaves the narratives of many other printers and publishers in New York, and also extensively researches the way in which readers responded either with their purse (through lists of subscription) or through responses and letters to newspapers. An Empire of Print showcases the significant role that New York publishers played in creating national networks of publishing and a national readership.