From: Mason, John <JMason>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 11:02:38 -0400

I concede your point - reading was not an elitist activity in early America. That makes it all the more troubling that it seems to be becoming so today. Are we making progress or going backwards?

John Mason, Director of Library and Educational Marketing Scholastic Inc., Trade Book Group 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012999 Phone (212) 389770 Fax (212) 389063 Email: jmason at scholastic.com




 Message----From: Jeffrey Canton [mailto:jeffrey_canton at yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 10:50 AM To: Mason, John (NY); Subscribers of ccbc-net Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Popular culture


I beg to differ -- Americans as a group were far more literate in the 17th, 18th and up-to-the-midth century than they are today. According to Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, when Tom Paine's Common Sense was published in 1776, it sold 100,000 copies in the first two months -- the equivilent of 8 million copies (Postman is writing in 1985, by the by) in the US -- he notes that while estimates of hoiw many copies of the book sold, if you use the figure of 400,000 copies in a population of 3,000,000, a book would have to sell 24,000,000 copies today. Paine, I might point, was no elitist and as Postman makes quite reading was not an elistist activity in pre-Civil War America.

Jeffrey Canton, Toronto

--- "Mason, John (NY)" wrote:


===== Jeffrey Canton 54 Fenwick Avenue Toronto, ON M4K 3H3 416F9?90


                
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Received on Fri 09 Jul 2004 10:02:38 AM CDT