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Product Description Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggeratedDo you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions. The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike. Review A dizzying, myth-busting history of reading. Upends a whole toolbox of old saws about readers' habits.-- "Keith Houston, author of The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time" As entertaining as it is insightful, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books is part history, part social commentary, part memoir, and fully engaging. Leah Price pithily assesses the uses of books past and present, and upends assumptions about the future of books in a digital age. Her contagious delight in books makes this book a delight.-- "Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World" At once authoritative and accessible, Price's account busts many myths about both the past and the future of reading. Long may it keep us talking about books!-- "William H. Sherm