voice and deliberation. And except for the overriding theme of corporate power, there is no clear interpretive framework for understanding when communication corporations did not get their way, such as when public broadcasting was estab- lished or AT&T was broken up. How should we understand the obligations and quid pro quo that government sometimes imposed on communication corpora- tions, such as non-discrimination of service, obligation to serve and regulated tar- iffs in the carrier arena and public trusteeship or the Fairness Doctrine in the broadcast arena? And how should we understand that critical, even occasionally anti-corporate viewpoints find their way on mainstream corporate media outlets? Moreover, while ‘corporate power’ is a compelling term, how do we know which segment of capital will prevail when, as is often the case, corporations vie with one another over policy? There are suggestions in the book about the power of social movements and strong presidents and the power of competition, but a coherent theory of this is not to be found. But this may be asking the book to be something it is not. Prologue to a Farce is a smart and readable overview of the history of American communications pol- icy built on a foundation of important secondary sources and propelled by a strong thesis. It is certainly the case that US communications have been dominated by private power, but it is not just a matter of corporations’ clout, it was also the par- ticular legacy of the American version of liberalism and the distrust of govern- mental power from the outset of the republic. A particularly interesting chapter explores a few examples where local citizens and governments have endeavored to create better and cheaper informational access through municipal ownership of a telecommunications system, as in Tacoma, Washington and three small towns in Illinois, or the success of Chicago Access Network TV due to strong municipal control of the cable television franchise. But these are the exceptions, and even they are usually challenged in court by corporate providers of communications services. That the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and the general dis- trust of government have largely empowered corporations over citizens is one of the mysteries of American history and law that this book begins to explain. Robert B. Horwitz University of California, San Diego Thomas Berker, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie and Kate Ward (eds), Domestication of Media and Technology. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press, 2005. £20.99. 255 pp. This book draws together the ideas and reflections of the key contributors to debates about the domestication of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the home. It includes contributions from those who originated the area of study (Silverstone, Morley), those who have been refining the notion over many years (Haddon and Sørensen), and some of those who have applied and modified the approach more recently (for example Bakardjieva). Although not all of the contributors were involved, it emerged from the EC Framework EMTEL project on ‘European Media, Technology and Everyday Life’, which ran from 1995 to EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 23(3) 376