If we assume that the inner logic of early modern studies is centered on revealing an early stage of modernity that usually goes unnoticed and that could prove fundamental to critically understanding the present, this book is a good contribution to the field. La invención de las noticias allows the reader to question the supposed modernity of the Habermasian notion of the “public sphere,” one basis of the “big divide” separating a pre- and post-Enlightenment world. In fact, many of the articles claim an early modern notion of the “public sphere”—one that is dependent not only on writing but also on oral discourse, and formed by a number of spaces such as markets, streets, or taverns (Rospocher, 48).

This collection of articles, resulting from the VIII Colloquium of SIERS, examines the production and circulation of information in early modern Europe, focusing on the emergence of the networks that allowed for the circulation of news as well as on the analysis of the creation, recreation, and invention of news in many contexts. Early modern news is revealed in this volume as conglomerates of information about present or past events that resemble not only what we understand nowadays as news but also what might be classified as popular poetry, satirical poetry, laudatory literature, or even autobiography. The volume offers food for thought, since its several authors reach sometimes opposed conclusions regarding fundamental aspects of the early modern invention and circulation of news, such as the role of anonymity, the figure of the editor, or the sociopolitical function of news. The volume is a good companion to excellent monographs on similar topics recently published by Andrew Pettegree and Henry Ettinghausen. However, the reader would gain clarity and insight if the editors had set methodological criteria to choose—from among the forty-three articles they included—only those clearly related to the topic discussed, even if in a remote way. Several articles are just close readings unrelated to the invention and/or spread of news.

The book is divided in four sections. The first and most interesting, “Las noticias y su circulación,” explores the sociopolitical impact of the emergence of news in the early modern world and describes the ways in which news circulated. Mario Infelise describes how secrets of state were transformed by anonymous news into widely circulated information that allowed common people to have access to top-secret information, thus changing the structure of society. Wolfgang Behringer and Nicholas Brownlees, among others, examine the invention of the periodical press in the seventeenth century and the ways in which it differed from other hegemonic sources of information, such as the “avisos” or the “relaciones.” The articles contained in this section also analyze the figure of the early modern news broker, the rise of Europe's first monopoly of news circulation, under the Thurn und Taxis family, and the emergence of new concepts associated with the diffusion of news, such as periodicity, reliability, and liability. The second section, “La Guerra,” focuses on the manifold ways in which information about war was used to serve ideological ends. It treats a wide range of topics, including the Catalonian war, the Portuguese Restoration, negative depictions of Transylvania in Spain during the Thirty Years’ War, and how news transformed the 1525 Spanish victory at Pavia into a providential event that garnered economic support for Charles V's wars. The third section, “La producción y la transmission,” explores the networks of news production. It includes, among other topics, examinations of the role of blind people as information professionals and the invention and circulation of news by Saavedra Fajardo, who published a letter under an invented Dutch name to influence public opinion, using plausible but fake strategies of information. It also includes a fascinating article, by Carlos Caracciolo, on several engravings of Giuseppe Mitelli that represent the consumption of news in the street in the seventeenth century while seeking to promote a counter-sensationalistic and ethical mode of reading news. The fourth and last section, “Ideología, religion y fiesta” treats, among a wide range of topics, the use of martyrdoms, courtly celebrations, and quotidian events as ideological tools that directly or indirectly take the form of news and promote attitudes such as adherence to the monarch, anti-Semitism, or orthodox religious zeal.