| The Joy of Books Contributor(s): Burns, Eric (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 1573920045 ISBN-13: 9781573920049 Publisher: Prometheus Books OUR PRICE: $26.99 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: September 1995 Annotation: In The Joy of Books, Eric Burns, a passionate lifelong reader, offers us an engaging, informal history of books and reading, beginning with the first clay tablets and continuing on to the latest John Grisham legal thriller. This history, which is humorous in the most surprising places, reveals the power books have always had to delight and entertain, and, more seriously, to enlighten, educate, and "raise possibilities". But the story of reading contains many dark chapters on bookburning and censorship: from Plato's suspicion that books can "tell lies" to the concerted efforts by fundamentalists and others to ban or bowdlerize the classics of world literature. There are other enemies as well: the corrosive effects of "political correctness", the "dumbing down" of education, and the growing indifference to the printed page in a culture overrun by electronic media, in which too many young people proudly wear their aliteracy like a baseball cap turned backward. Are we in danger of becoming merely passive spectators in the marketplace of ideas? Is the special union between readers and authors doomed? Has indifference set in; do separation and divorce seem likely? The Joy of Books is for all who believe otherwise, who will delight in learning of the storms that readers and writers have weathered in the past, and who will take heart in the future from Burns's compelling vision. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - Language Arts & Disciplines | Publishers & Publishing Industry |
| Dewey: 028.9 |
| LCCN: 95021306 |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.24" W x 9.36" (1.06 lbs) 218 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Burns's compelling yet accessible history of the reading experience rejoices in the diverse motivations and methods in the developing relationship between readers and writers even as he voices concern at the powerful forces of ignorance and censorship that seek to keep them apart. |
Contributor Bio(s): Burns, Eric: - Eric Burns is a uniquely varied man of letters. His first play won the Eudora Welty Emerging Playwrights Completion. As an NBC News correspondent, in addition to being an Emmy winner, he was named one of the best writers in the history of television news. And as an author, he has twice won the American Library Association's "Best of the Best" award (for The Spirits of American: A Social History of Alcohol in 2004, and The Smoke of the Gods: A Social History of Tobacco in 2007). He has also written 1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar, chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best non-fiction books of 2015. He lives in Westport, Connecticut. |