Reading in America

Cathy N. Davidson is professor of English at Duke University. She is the author of the award-winning Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America and The Experimental Fictions of Ambrose Bierce: Structuring the Ineffable.

This engaging collection of essays, offering in their various ways a history of books and reading in the United States from colonial times to the present, will appeal to all students of American A rich resource for readers interested in the study of American culture. South Atlantic Review. The essays are noteworthy in their own right, and the collection overall is unified and coherent... Reading in America shows a field in its early stages that is attracting a group of extremely talented scholars. Journal of American History A rich resource for readers interested in the study of American culture South Atlantic Review

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1. What is the History of Books?Chapter 2. Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New EnglandChapter 3. Chapbooks in AmericaChapter 4. A Republican LiteratureChapter 5. The World in Black and WhiteChapter 6. The Life and Times of Charlotte TempleChapter 7. Antebellum Reading and the Ironies of Technological InnovationChapter 8. Sense and SensibilityChapter 9. Reflections on the Changing Publishing Objectives of Secular Black Book Publishers, 1900—1986Chapter 10. Becoming NoncanonicalChapter 11. The Book-of-the-Month Club and the General ReaderChapter 12. Literacy and Mass MediaContributors