What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

The History and Future of Reading

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By Leah Price

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$28.00

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$36.50 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 20, 2019. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated
 
Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone.
 
The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions.
 
The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike.

Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020
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On Sale
Aug 20, 2019
Page Count
224 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465042685

Leah Price

About the Author

Leah Price has taught English at Cambridge University, Harvard University, and Rutgers University, where from fall 2019 onward she will be founding director of the Rutgers Book Initiative. She is the author How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain and the editor of Unpacking My Library.

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