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 <i>A History of the Book in America</i> traces the complex even contradictory consequences of these changes in the production circulation and use of print.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>Contributors:<br/>Megan Benton Pacific Lutheran University<br/>Paul S. Boyer University of Wisconsin-Madison<br/>Una M. Cadegan University of Dayton<br/>Phyllis Dain Columbia University<br/>James P. Danky University of Wisconsin-Madison<br/>Ellen Gruber Garvey New Jersey City University<br/>Peter Jaszi American University<br/>Carl F. Kaestle Brown University<br/>Nicolás Kanellos University of Houston<br/>Richard L. Kaplan ABC-Clio Publishing<br/>Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette Washington D.C.<br/>Elizabeth Long Rice University<br/>Elizabeth McHenry New York University<br/>Sally M. Miller University of the Pacific<br/>Richard Ohmann Wesleyan University<br/>Janice A. Radway Duke University<br/>Joan Shelley Rubin University of Rochester<br/>Jonathan D. Sarna Brandeis University<br/>Charles A. Seavey University of Missouri Columbia<br/>Michael Schudson University of California San Diego<br/>William Vance Trollinger Jr. University of Dayton<br/>Richard L. Venezky (1938–2004)<br/>James L. W. West III Pennsylvania State University<br/>Wayne A. Wiegand Florida State University<br/>Michael Winship University of Texas at Austin<br/>Martha Woodmansee Case Western Reserve University