Essays by a dozen historians are concerned with various aspects of the ownership, authorship, and use of books by American architects in the period when their profession emerged. It was during the lat
The start of the twenty-first century has brought with it a rich variety of ways in which readers can connect with one another, access texts, and make sense of what they are reading. At the same time,
By producing literature in nontraditional forms -- books made of cardboard trash, posters in subway stations, miniature shopping bags, digital publications, and even children's toys -- Chileans have m
From 1890 to 1960, some of Anglo-America's most heated cultural contests over books, sex, and censorship were staged not at home, but abroad in the City of Light. Paris, with its extraordinary liberti
In 1495, the Spanish humanist Antonio de Nebrija published a Spanish-to-Latin dictionary that became a best seller. Over the next century it was revised dozens of times, in nine European cities. As th
As a result of a series of court cases, by the mid-1960s the U.S. post office could no longer interdict books that contained homosexuality. Gay writers were eager to take advantage of this new freedom
Americans tend to imagine their public libraries as time-honored advocates of equitable access to information for all. Through much of the twentieth century, however, many black Americans were denied
Long before activists raised concerns about the dangers of commercials airing during Saturday morning cartoons, America's young people emerged as a group that businesses should target with goods for s
"The greatest bibliographer of our time," was how historian Robert Darnton described D. F. McKenzie. Yet until now many of McKenzie's major essays, scattered in specialist journals and inaccessible pu
Harry Fenn was one of the most skilled and successful illustrators in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time when illustrated periodicals and books were the primary mea
Hochman (foreign literatures and linguistics, Ben-Gurion U.) uses contemporary writings, illustrations, and even penciled margin notes to give a fascinating analysis of how the reading of the 19th cen
During the Cold War, the editor of Time magazine declared, "A good citizen is a good reader." As postwar euphoria faded, a wide variety of Americans turned to reading to understand their place in the
Recently publishers on the Christian Right have been reprinting nineteenth-century children's history books and marketing them to parents as "anchor texts" for homeschool instruction. Why, Gregory M.
In Thinking Outside the Book, Augusta Rohrbach works through the increasing convergences between digital humanities and literary studies to explore the meaning and primacy of the book as a literary, m
The nature and purposes of the library in all its multiform manifestations are explored by scholars of library science, literature, and history. Their topics include subscription libraries and commerc
