"Blog" is short for "Web log"?an online site with time-dated postings, maintained by one or more posters, that features links and commentary. That's the most basic definition, but it is like saying a car is a means of transportation featuring four wheels. In Blog, syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author Hugh Hewitt helps you catch up with and get ahead of this phenomenon.

"Millions of people are changing their habits when it comes to information acquisition," writes Hewitt. "This has happened many times before?with the appearance of the printing press, then the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, and Internet. Now the blogosphere has appeared, and it has come so suddenly as to surprise even the most sophisticated of analysts."

If you doubt the influence blogs have in society, think again. Better yet, just ask Senator Trent Lott regarding his comments at Strom Thurmond's birtuday celebration. Ask New York Times editor-in-chief Howell Raines about reporter Jayson Blair's fabricated stories. Ask Dan Rather and CBS about President Bush's National Guard documents faxed from a Texas Kinko's. Or ask John Kerry about his battle with Swift Boat veterans. All of these major stories were fully covered by the mainstream media only after their exposure in the blogosphere.

"Hugh Hewitt [is] the unofficial historian of the blogging movement." ?The Wall Street Journal