From: Jeffrey Canton <jeffrey_canton>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 07:50:01 -0700 (PDT)

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 09:50:01 AM CDT