In identifying the chief types of U.S. anti-press violence, the author discusses four basic patterns: violence among individuals, violence against ideas, violence against groups, and violence against an institution. Each pattern has its own chronology. Five models of the press in U.S. history are developed: rational liberty, partisanism, commercialism, industry, and institution. The author implicitly argues that media ideologies are rooted in media practices. The outline of media models is meant to illustrate the point that media are defined historically. Media are networks of relationships that can be constructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed in various ways with varying implications for where power is located and how it is exercised. Violent activity is often involved in the process of definition. Maintaining that violence has been an integral part of the culture of public expression in this Nation since earliest times, this survey develops the concept that violent reactions to writers and publishers, rather than occurring sporadically, have been systematic and recurrent, indicative of a long and consistent process of cultural evolution. Disputing claims that anti-press violence is a marginal aspect of American society conducted by fringe elements of the population, the book profiles decades of such incidents of aggression, from colonial printers to Salman Rushdie. The author presents a detailed taxonomy of the various forms of anti-press violence and historical analyses of such conflicts during the American Revolution, Early Republic, Civil War, and other periods. Chapter notes, a subject index, and appended survey questionnaire and discussions of the flow of antiabolitionist violence and Civil War newspaper mobbings