Product Description: Each of the 100 books selected for inclusion have made significant impacts upon different aspects of our lives, including world religions, politics, sciences, arts and theater, and social awareness. Books from ancient times, such as Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Koran and The Republic by Plato are included...read more

Product Description: In the digital information age, when the boundaries of content producer and content consumer are increasingly blurred, The Architecture of Knowledge questions the fate of the public library. The library has historically been a vital component of civic life, but many aspects of its traditional function have already become contentious...read more

Product Description: In the digital information age, when the boundaries of content producer and content consumer are increasingly blurred, The Architecture of Knowledge questions the fate of the public library. The library has historically been a vital component of civic life, but many aspects of its traditional function have already become contentious...read more

Product Description: Improve your reading Improve your life. Are you bored by bestsellers you can t remember a week later? Is your book group ready for more meaningful discussions? Have TV and movies got your brain on autopilot? Back to the Best Books explores 36 great works of literature, some that you know (Twain, Bronte) and some you might not (Undset, Cronin) that will bring you new insights about your own life...read more

Product Description: The Best Young Adult Books Contest presents a program that involves the whole classroom in an effort to plan, develop, and perform a mock "academy awards" show. The reader is guided through each and every step of the process, beginning with students reading and nominating books in eight categories and ending with a full-fledged production...read more

Andrew Piper grew up liking books and loving computers. While occasionally burying his nose in books, he was going to computer camp, programming his Radio Shack TRS-80, and playing Pong. His eventual love of reading made him a historian of the book and a connoisseur of print, but as a card-carrying member of the first digital generation—and the father of two digital natives—he understands that we live in electronic times. Book Was There is Piper’s surprising and always entertaining essay on reading in an e-reader world. Much ink has been spilled lamenting or championing the decline of printed books, but Piper shows that the rich history of reading itself offers unexpected clues to what lies in store for books, print or digital. From medieval manuscript books to today’s playable media and interactive urban fictions, Piper explores the manifold ways that physical media have shaped how we read, while also observing his own children as they face the struggles and triumphs of learning to read. In doing so, he uncovers the intimate connections we develop with our reading materials—how we hold them, look at them, share them, play with them, and even where we read them—and shows how reading is interwoven with our experiences in life. Piper reveals that reading’s many identities, past and present, on page and on screen, are the key to helping us understand the kind of reading we care about and how new technologies will—and will not—change old habits. Contending that our experience of reading belies naive generalizations about the future of books, Book Was There is an elegantly argued and thoroughly up-to-date tribute to the endurance of books in our ever-evolving digital world.

Product Description: One hundred of today’s most prominent literary and cultural icons talk about the books that hold a special place in their hearts—that made them who they are today.Leading authors, politicians, CEOs, actors, and other notables share the books that changed their life, why they love them, and their passion with readers everywhere...read more

Product Description: Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Typography. Foreword by Jenni Quilter. Of Loney's long-anticipated collection of essays, Johanna Drucker has written: "Few people have mused with such imagination on the topic of the book as Alan Loney does in this volume...read more

Product Description: A groundbreaking vision on the future of reading, from an early innovator on Amazon's Kindle team. Is digital the death knell for print? Or will it reinvigorate the written word? What will happen to bookstores, book browsing, libraries, even autographs? Will they die out―or evolve into something new? In Burning the Page, digital pioneer Jason Merkoski charts the ebook revolution's striking impact on the ways in which we create, discover, and share ideas...read more

Product Description: The question of an erotic readership has always vexed scholars. With little evidence of anyone's actually reading erotic material, scholars have had to make do with variations of an "ideal reader" approach. Insofar as it presupposes authorial intention and a stable meaning, this theoretical model proves unsatisfactory...read more