Items related to The Joy of Books
Synopsis
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.
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From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Eric Burns is is an author, playwright, media critic, and former broadcast journalist. He has worked at NBC Nightly News and the Today show, and he won an Emmy Award for media criticism. He is the author of many books including Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism, which was a selection of both the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club,
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- PublisherPrometheus
- Publication date1995
- ISBN 10 1573920045
- ISBN 13 9781573920049
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages218
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The Joy of Books : Confessions of a Lifelong Reader
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The Joy of Books
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Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. 207 pp. A history of books and reading, from clay tablets to John Gresham. You will no doubt find your favorite author here, as well as a dozen others that will become your future favorites. A reader's best friend!. Seller Inventory # 6166EH
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