This book took more than seven years to research and write and has passed through several stages of transformation. During this long process, I have benefited from the encouragement and ideas of countless colleagues, mentors, friends, and family members. First, I would like to thank Charles D. Smith and Julia Clancy-Smith. Carl’s and Julia’s mentoring, insight, and engagement with my work were instrumental in seeing this project through. I will forever be in their debt. I would also like to thank Linda T. Darling. Linda is the consummate mentor; her office door was always open to me for endless academic questions and discussions. I would like to thank Kate Wahl, the Stanford University Press executive editor, for taking a chance on my book and for her thoroughness and professionalism. The critical and encouraging comments of the SUP anonymous readers were extremely helpful in framing my revisions. My book is much better because of the readers’ advice. I am especially grateful to Walter Armbrust, who meticulously examined and critiqued the entire manuscript. His insights led me to explore new paths I had not yet considered. I am indebted to many colleagues, friends, and acquaintances: Donald Malcolm Reid, Tracy Gould, Julia Hutchins-Richards, and Christina Lindeman, for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of Chapter 2; Frédéric Lagrange, for sending me some relevant pages from the catalogs of Odeon, Columbia, and Baidaphon record companies; Munther Yunis, for allowing me to use his extensive library on linguistics; and Lauren Monroe, for reading and commenting on my introduction. I would also like to thank Deborah Starr and Vikash Yadav for sharing their book proposals with me and for their helpful advice on the publication process. Through the years, a great number of people have directly or indirectly contributed to my scholarship and intellectual growth. I benefited from the mentoring and advice of Richard Eaton, Leila Hudson, Michael Bonine, Adel Gamal, Kamran Talattof, Amy Newhall, Richard Cosgrove, Kevin Gosner, Eric Davis, and Stephen Reinhardt. Throughout the writing process, my colleagues and the academic staff in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University were generous and unbelievably supportive. I am truly blessed to work in such a collegial and supportive atmosphere. Financial assistance for the research and writing of this project came from a variety of sources. The bulk of the research for this book took place in Egypt and England, with the help of generous research grants from Fulbright-Hays and the American Research Center in Egypt. Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities summer research grants in 2008 and 2010 helped me acquire additional resources, which were instrumental in the completion of this project. I am also indebted to the Cornell University Library and especially Ali Houissa, the Middle East and Islamic Studies librarian, for acquiring dozens of rare Arabic periodicals, which were extremely useful for my research. A part of Chapter 5 and a section from the introduction are reprinted with permission from my previous work, “Media Capitalism: Colloquial Mass Culture and Nationalism in Egypt, 1908–1918,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42(1) (February 2010): 83–103. I am eternally grateful to my parents, Ferial Sammakia and Adel Fahmy, who sacrificed a lot for my education and helped instill in me a sense of historical and intellectual curiosity. Most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Kaila Bussert, who proofread countless incarnations of this manuscript and endured my endless obsessions with this book project. Her love and unfailing intellectual and emotional support made this book possible.