Reading in America: Literature and Social History

What is a book? Cathy N. Davidson brings together twelve distinguished authors to offer the first history of books in America from Puritan time to the present--and to introduce American readers to the exciting field of inquiry known in France as histoire du livre. Drawing on the methodologies of history, education, literary studies, ethnography, and bibliography, the authors explore subjects ranging from book production and publishing practices to the role books played in the lives of American women and men, minorities, workers, and immigrants.

Robert Darnton described the "communications circuit" that brings books from author to reader. Donald Lazere suggests America's "one dimensional" oral media threaten to render books irrelevant. In other revisionist essays, Barbara Sicherman discovers that reading practices of late-Victorian women contrdict rading-revolution theory; Janice A. Radway analyzes the selection process of the Book-of-the-month Club and the formation of middle-brow culture; and Victor Neuburg asks how we can understand the intellectual life of the poor when the books they read--eraly American chapbooks, for instance--no longer exist.