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

Carl F. Kaestle is University Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Education, History, and Public Policy at Brown University. He is author or editor of six books, including Literacy in the United States: Readers and Reading since 1880. Janice A. Radway is professor of literature at Duke University. She is author or editor of four books, including Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature and A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire (both from the University of North Carolina Press).