Product Description: The ninth largest city in the United States, Dallas is exceptional among American cities for the claims of its elites and boosters that it is a “city with no limits” and a “city with no history.” Home to the Dallas Cowboys, self-styled as “America’s Team,” setting for the television series that glamorized its values of self-invention and success, and site of the assassination of John F...read more

Product Description: Major campaigns to raise levels of literacy have taken place for centuries and share many common elements. But despite literary campaigns spanning over five decades, 860 million adults still lack minimal ability to read, write, and calculate...read more

Product Description: Representing three decades of research, Literacy and Historical Development: A Reader presents some of the most important historical scholarship on literacy in Europe and the United States. The approaches, research, and conclusions reflected in this collection of fifteen essays has changed how historians and many others conceptualize literacy and represents a body of scholarship that is transforming both contemporary and historical literacy theories...read more

Product Description: Asserting the need for social science historians to examine their own field, this wide-ranging volume offers an intellectual history and critical evaluation of interdisciplinary social science and social science historiography. The editors present a creative, experimental mix of topics and genres spanning a range of contemporary thought in the field—exploring the past, present, and future of social science history...read more

Product Description: We grow up--so simple, it just seems to happen--and yet there are endless variations in the way we do it. What part does culture play in the process? How much do politics and economics have to do with it? As the nation has matured, have the ways people grow up changed too? This book traces the many paths to adulthood that Americans have pursued over time...read more

Product Description: A compelling collection by one of the pioneers of revisionist approaches to the history of literacy in North America and Europe, The Labyrinths of Literacy offers original and controversial views on the relation of literacy to society, leading the way for scholars and citizens who are willing to question the importance and function of literacy in the development of society today...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Harvey Graff’s pioneering study presents a new and original interpretation of the place of literacy in nineteenth-century society and culture. Based upon an intensive comparative historical analysis, employing both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and on a wide range of sources, The Literacy Myth reevaluates the role typically assigned to literacy in historical scholarship, cultural understanding, economic development schemes, and social doctrines and ideologies...read more

"This book will be a monumental contribution to the topic and a staple of scholarship for decades." —Michael B. Katz"A remarkable volume of critical synthesis and passionate revisionism." —Journal of Economic History"... ambitious and stimulating... required reading not only for social historians but also for policy-makers and activists." —Histoire Sociale"Clearly an important book... marks a significant point in the history of literacy studies." —History of Education Quarterly"A stimulating challenge to traditional assumptions and scholarly commonplaces." —Journal of Communication

Product Description: For this collection, Harvey Graff chose readings which, taken together, provide a detailed overview of the history of growing up in America from the colonial period to the present. Arranged chronologically, the selections document a wide variety of experiences based on gender, social class, ethnicity, race, geography, and the changing meanings and significance of age itself...read more