A History of the Book in America

In a period characterized by expanding markets, national consolidation, and social upheaval, print culture picked up momentum as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth. Books, magazines, and newspapers were produced more quickly and more cheaply, reaching ever-increasing numbers of readers. Volume 4 of A History of the Book in America traces the complex, even contradictory consequences of these changes in the production, circulation, and use of print. More Description

In a period characterized by expanding markets, national consolidation, and social upheaval, print culture picked up momentum as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth. Books, magazines, and newspapers were produced more quickly and more cheaply, reaching ever-increasing numbers of readers. Volume 4 of A History of the Book in America traces the complex, even contradictory consequences of these changes in the production, circulation, and use of print.



Contributors to this volume explain that although mass production encouraged consolidation and standardization, readers increasingly adapted print to serve their own purposes, allowing for increased diversity in the midst of concentration and integration. Considering the book in larger social and cultural networks, essays address the rise of consumer culture, the extension of literacy and reading through schooling, the expansion of secondary and postsecondary education and the growth of the textbook industry, the growing influence of the professions and their dependence on print culture, and the history of relevant technology. As the essays here attest, the expansion of print culture between 1880 and 1940 enabled it to become part of Americans' everyday business, social, political, and religious lives.



Contributors:

Megan Benton, Pacific Lutheran University

Paul S. Boyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Una M. Cadegan, University of Dayton

Phyllis Dain, Columbia University

James P. Danky, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University

Peter Jaszi, American University

Carl F. Kaestle, Brown University

Nicolas Kanellos, University of Houston

Richard L. Kaplan, ABC-Clio Publishing

Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Long, Rice University

Elizabeth McHenry, New York University

Sally M. Miller, University of the Pacific

Richard Ohmann, Wesleyan University

Janice A. Radway, Duke University

Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester

Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

Charles A. Seavey, University of Missouri, Columbia

Michael Schudson, University of California, San Diego

William Vance Trollinger Jr., University of Dayton

Richard L. Venezky (1938-2004)

James L. W. West III, Pennsylvania State University

Wayne A. Wiegand, Florida State University

Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin

Martha Woodmansee, Case Western Reserve University