Check out this link for a photo collection at Slate called “Remember Reading on Paper?” This photo of James Dean was taken at the Winslow farm in Indiana in 1955. He is reading James Whitcomb Riley.
There seems to be so much discussion in the media and on various blogs lately contemplating the end not only of traditional media, but of print culture in general. Ross Douthat at the New York Times takes up the debate in a blog post titled Reading as a Luxury Good. “Yes, escape and vacation have always been luxury goods, but since the dawn of mass literacy, deep reading has been a possibility for everyone, rich and working-class and poor alike. Yes, most people who grew up in Jacobs’ circumstances didn’t read their way into broader intellectual vistas — but some of them did, and any of them could.”
