Power of Reading: From Socrates to Twitter

Here is a natural companion to Christopher Booker's bestselling The Seven Basic Plots (Continuum) and John Gross's seminal study The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). The most eminent cultural and social historian Frank Furedi presents an eclectic and entirely original history of reading. The very act of reading and the choice of reading material endow individuals with an identity that possesses great symbolic significance. Already in ancient Rome, Cicero was busy drawing up a hierarchy of different types of readers. Since that time, people have been divided into a variety of categories- literates and illiterates, intensive and extensive readers, or vulgo and discreet readers. In the 19th Century, accomplished readers were praised as 'men of letters' while their moral opposites were described as 'unlettered'. Today distinctions are made between cultural and instrumental readers and scorn is communicated towards the infamous 'tabloid reader'. The purpose of this book is to explore the changing meanings attributed to the act of reading. Although it has an historical perspective, the book's focus is very much on the culture of reading that prevails in the 21st Century. There are numerous texts on the history of literacy (Hoggart), yet there is no publication devoted to the the history of readers and their relationship with wider culture and society. It is thus a fascinating insight into understanding the post-Gutenberg debates about literacy in a multimedia environment with such a strong emphasis on the absorption of information. Taking a cue from George Steiner, Furedi argues vigorously for the restoration of the art of reading- every bit as important as the art of writing.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction 1 The Cultural Contradictions 2 Reading in Search of Meaning 3 The Democratization of Reading and the Proliferation of Readers 4 The Enlightenment: A Reader's Revolution 5 The Werther Effect: The Reader at Risk 6 Reading and Health: An Enduring Dilemma 7 The Complication of Reading 8 From Enlightenment to Disenchantment Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Frank Furedi fled to England in 1956 from Hungary. He was appointed Professor of Social Studies at the University of Kent but celebrated also as a pundit and public intellectual throughout the English speaking world. His most celebrated books include Paranoid Parenting (reissued by Continuum) The Culture of Fearand Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone. His books are widely if critically reviewed and he is on the lecture circuit from Chatham House to Adelaide.