Scholars have been puzzling over the "future of the book" since Marshall McLuhan's famous maxim "the medium is the message" in the early 1950s. McLuhan famously argued that electronic media was creating a global village in which books would become obsolete. Such views were ahead of their time, but today they are all too relevant as declining sales, even among classic texts, have become a serious matter in academic publishing.

Does anyone still read long and complex works, either from the past or the present? Is the role of a professional reader and reviewer of manuscripts still relevant? Book Matters closely analyses these questions and others. Alan Sica surmises that the concentration span required for studying and discussing complex texts has slipped away, as undergraduate classes are becoming inundated by shorter, easier-to-teach scholarly and literary works. He considers such matters in part from the point of view of a former editor of scholarly journals. In an engaging style, he gives readers succinct analyses of books and ideas that once held the interest of millions of discerning readers, such as Simone de Beavoir's Second Sex and the works of David Graham Phillips and C. Wright Mills, among others.

Book Matters is not a nostalgic cry for lost ideas, but instead a stark reminder of just how aware and analytically illuminating certain scholars were prior to the Internet, and how endangered the book is in this era of pixelated communication.

Introduction: Distractions from the Printed WordPrinted Books and Electronic Gear Connecting Past and Present Virtuoso ReadingPart One. The Art of Reading and Reviewing1. Speaking One's Mind Being Unafraid Nice Nellyism Triumphant Teasing Out the Richly Embedded Nuance Overseeing a Book Review Journal2. For the (Printed) Book Defining the Academic Library Saving the Scholarly Book Reviewing Books Online Real Ink on Real Paper Globalized Book Publishing3. Expressing Oneself A New Categorical Imperative Friends and Acquaintances Pigeonholes of Content Another Note about Categories Behind the Scenes: What and Who Counts Looking Back to Understand the FuturePart Two. Past Masters Reconsidered4. Origin of the Public Sphere: Addison and Steele5. The Masses Meet Social Science: Everyman and The Modern Library6. Noble Muckraking: David Graham Phillips7. Integrated Scholarship: Booker T. Washington, Robert E. Park, and W. E. B. Du Bois8. The Textbook that Codified a School: Robert Park and Ernest Burgess9. The Maddening University: Upton Sinclair and Ben Ginsberg10. The Journalist as Social Scientist: Walter Lippmann11. Facing the Irrational Fearlessly: Vilfredo Pareto12. The Necessary Big Picture: Lewis Mumford13. Unsurpassable Greatness: Max Weber14. Founding Feminism for Intellectuals: Simone de Beauvoir15. Micro Meets Macro: Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills16. Sociological Psychiatry: Harry Stack Sullivan17. Post-war America Defined Again: Max Lerner18. When Theory Tipped the Scales: Talcott Parsons and Associates19. Living Theory?: A Pedagogical Debate20. Virtuoso Reviewing Today: Andrew AbbottCoda: Tribute to Irving Louis HorowitzReferencesIndex