The Citizen Machine is the untold political history of television's formative era. Historian Anna McCarthy goes behind the scenes of early television programming, revealing that long before the age of PBS, leaders from business, philanthropy, and social reform movements as well as public intellectuals were all obsessively concerned with TV's potential to mold the right kind of citizen.

Based on years of path-breaking archival work, The Citizen Machine sheds new light on the place of television in the postwar American political landscape.