Braman, S. (Ed.) (2003). Communication Researchers and Policy-Making. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Sourcebooks. 576 pages. This volume, skillfully compiled by Sandra Braman, explores the confluence of communication research and policy making. Contributors range from communication pioneers Harold Lasswell and Paul Lazarsfeld to seminal policy figures like Woodrow Wilson and John Dewey. The volume includes, as well, current contributions from a host of academicians and policy analysts ranging from Columbia Professor James Carey to the President of Research Solutions, Cecilie Gaziano. As rich as the collection of articles is in its own right, the introduction, conclusion, and transitional chapters by editor Sandra Braman provide the indispensable links among the nearly two dozen contributions. Examining historical accounts of the rise of communication research in the forties through its role today, one is struck by the distance that now separates communication research and policy making. As Braman writes, while examining the policy implications of research results and bringing those insights to the attention of policy-makers may have great value to society, doing so can impede [italics added] the career of an academic by taking time and energy away from the peer-reviewed publications that are the primary criterion for tenure and promotion (p. 415). The irony in this confounding admission is that the field of communication research was developed largely through the support of the federal government. As Christopher Simpson (pp. 259-60) explains, World War II shaped the emerging field of communication research as a reaction to the fears of Nazi warfare, a term that entered the English language in 1941 as an imperfect translation of Weltanschauungkrieg (worldview warfare). Six centers of psychological warfare emerged within the federal government, including the Office of War Information led by Elmer Davis and the Office of Strategic Services led by William Donovan. It was within these organizations that many social scientists began their careers in communication research and went on to establish research institutions outside of government. As communication research crystallized in the decade after the war, Simpson reports that 96% of all federal funding at that time was provided by the U.S. military. Several dozen studies in Public Opinion Quarterly were supported by the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Air Force, the CIA, and the U.S. Information Agency. The most important communication research centers--ranging from the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center to MIT's Center for international Studies--depended for their survival on funding from national security agencies. Without the funding from the military, CIA, and USIA, Simpson contends, mass communication research would not have matured into a distinct scholarly field (pp. 271-275). Simpson worries that the network of scientists and state sponsors for psychological warfare a pivotal role in creating a new branch of social science, euphemistically termed 'communication research,' whose framework played an indirect role in shaping our view of U.S. society. He approvingly quotes James Carey: We first produce the world by symbolic work, and then take up residence in the world we have produced (p. 283). In a separate chapter by Carey, he takes Elihu Katz to task for his 1977 report for the BBC on broadcast research priorities. While acknowledging the importance of the study, he dwells on the problems the report creates rather than on the more obvious opportunities it presents (p. 438). Carey questions the value of the silent embrace between the scholarly community and the broadcast industry: do not think it produces any necessary or potential benefits for scholarship. In fact, I think a better case can be made that scholarship, like many of the arts, flourishes when it stands in determined opposition to the established order (p. …