03358nam 2200637 450 991014953590332120200520144314.01-351-53103-41-4128-6447-X(CKB)3710000000934010(MiAaPQ)EBC4785137(Au-PeEL)EBL4785137(CaPaEBR)ebr11329482(OCoLC)960906127(BIP)055803198(EXLCZ)99371000000093401020170124h20162016 uy 0engurcnu||||||||rdacontentrdamediardacarrierBook matters the changing nature of literacy /Alan SicaNew Brunswick, New Jersey ;London, England :Transaction Publishers,2016.20161 online resource (283 pages)1-4128-6502-6 Includes bibliographical references and index.Scholars have been puzzling over the "future of the book" since Marshall McLuhan's famous maxim "the medium is the message" in the early 1950s. McLuhan famously argued that electronic media was creating a global village in which books would become obsolete. Such views were ahead of their time, but today they are all too relevant as declining sales, even among classic texts, have become a serious matter in academic publishing. Does anyone still read long and complex works, either from the past or the present? Is the role of a professional reader and reviewer of manuscripts still relevant? Book Matters closely analyses these questions and others. Alan Sica surmises that the concentration span required for studying and discussing complex texts has slipped away, as undergraduate classes are becoming inundated by shorter, easier-to-teach scholarly and literary works. He considers such matters in part from the point of view of a former editor of scholarly journals. In an engaging style, he gives readers succinct analyses of books and ideas that once held the interest of millions of discerning readers, such as Simone de Beavoir's Second Sex and the works of David Graham Phillips and C. Wright Mills, among others. Book Matters is not a nostalgic cry for lost ideas, but instead a stark reminder of just how aware and analytically illuminating certain scholars were prior to the Internet, and how endangered the book is in this era of pixelated communication.Books and readingHistoryIntellectual lifeHistoryLearning and scholarshipHistoryScholarly publishingHistoryCriticismHistorySocial sciencesHistoryBooks And ReadingIntellectual LifeLearning And ScholarshipLiterary CriticismHistoryEducationBooks and readingHistory.Intellectual lifeHistory.Learning and scholarshipHistory.Scholarly publishingHistory.CriticismHistory.Social sciencesHistory.028Sica Alan1949-129150MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910149535903321Book matters3420840UNINA