For the first time, the story of how and why we have plumbed the mysteries of reading, and why it matters today.   Reading is perhaps the essential practice of modern civilization. For centuries, it has been seen as key to both personal fulfillment and social progress, and millions today depend on it to participate fully in our society. Yet, at its heart, reading is a surprisingly elusive practice. This book tells for the first time the story of how American scientists and others have sought to understand reading, and, by understanding it, to improve how people do it. Starting around 1900, researchers—convinced of the urgent need to comprehend a practice central to industrial democracy—began to devise instruments and experiments to investigate what happened to people when they read. They traced how a good reader’s eyes moved across a page of printed characters, and they asked how their mind apprehended meanings as they did so. In schools across the country, millions of Americans learned to read through the application of this science of reading. At the same time, workers fanned out across the land to extend the science of reading into the social realm, mapping the very geography of information for the first time. Their pioneering efforts revealed that the nation’s most pressing problems were rooted in drastic informational inequities, between North and South, city and country, and white and Black—and they suggested ways to tackle those problems. Today, much of how we experience our information society reflects the influence of these enterprises. This book explains both how the science of reading shaped our age and why, with so-called reading wars still plaguing schools across the nation, it remains bitterly contested.

When the pirate operator Oliver Smedley shot and killed his rival Reg Calvert in Smedley s country cottage on June 21, 1966, it was a turning point for the outlaw radio stations dotting the coastal waters of England. Situated on ships and offshore forts like Shivering Sands, these stations blasted away at the high-minded BBC s broadcast monopoly with the new beats of the Stones and DJs like Screaming Lord Sutch. For free-market ideologues like Smedley, the pirate stations were entrepreneurial efforts to undermine the growing British welfare state as embodied by the BBC. The worlds of high table and underground collide in this riveting history."

In "The Nature of the Book," a tour de force of cultural history, Adrian Johns constructs an entirely original and vivid picture of print culture and its many arenas--commercial, intellectual, political, and individual.
"A compelling exposition of how authors, printers, booksellers and readers competed for power over the printed page. . . . The richness of Mr. Johns's book lies in the splendid detail he has collected to describe the world of books in the first two centuries after the printing press arrived in England."--Alberto Manguel, "Washington Times"
"[A] mammoth and stimulating account of the place of print in the history of knowledge. . . . Johns has written a tremendously learned primer."--D. Graham Burnett, "New Republic"
"A detailed, engrossing, and genuinely eye-opening account of the formative stages of the print culture. . . . This is scholarship at its best."--Merle Rubin, "Christian Science Monitor"
"The most lucid and persuasive account of the new kind of knowledge produced by print. . . . A work to rank alongside McLuhan."--John Sutherland, "The Independent"
"Entertainingly written. . . . The most comprehensive account available . . . well documented and engaging."--Ian Maclean, "Times Literary Supplement"

Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized--one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood.

"Piracy" explores the intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the twenty-first. Brimming with broader implications for today's debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns's book ultimately argues that piracy has always stood at the center of our attempts to reconcile creativity and commerce--and that piracy has been an engine of social, technological, and intellectual innovations as often as it has been their adversary. From Cervantes to Sonny Bono, from Maria Callas to Microsoft, from Grub Street to Google, no chapter in the story of piracy evades Johns's graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.

Continuing the story based on the brief, eventful and tragic life of Englishman William Reynolds and the parallel exploits of the furtive Atzerodt. Arriving in the bustling city of Baltimore, William is soon to realise his ambition to become a soldier. Following attestation in a Union Army Volunteer Regiment and initial encampment and preparations in the city, Reynolds' regiment is sent south to serve in the Gulf. Surviving a perilous sea journey he finds himself fighting his way through Louisiana...at Bisland...Port Hudson...Sabine Crossroads...Pleasant Hill. Wounded in battle and forced to leave the Army, Reynolds finds employment in a remote coal mining community in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Here he lodges with a Scots family who are all members of a temperance society and, out of respect, he too joins the Good Templars. Yet William finds that digging coal earns him insufficient wages to make ends meet and, after six months as a miner, service in the Union Army once more beckons.Come April 1865, in the aftermath of the momentous events at Ford's Theatre - the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln - fate decrees that Reynolds is set to lead a gruelling manhunt across rural Maryland. ..

Colourful and dynamic art inspires me. However, I never expected it to lead me on a life-changing journey. A physical and intellectual journey. Physical because it involved the discovery and examination of vases of extraordinary beauty from Venice and Murano, Italy. Intellectual because it involved deep reflection about the meaning of art and its function as a "repository and conduit of culture." My journey centered around the work of Vittorio Ferro. With a working life in the glass industry of sixty-seven years, he was one of the world's greatest masters of murrine glass. My interest fast became multi-dimensional, I began photographing vases and went to Venice and Murano to find out more. Publishing became important to complete what had become a significant and passionate part of my life. This book records my journey. A "vasegraphy" (va: z-e-grafi) or study of sixty-seven rare murrine vases made by Vittorio Ferro, one-third signed, revealed in a kaleidoscope of Venice and Murano, and my new understanding of art. A photographic journey with a fresh approach to glass.

Renaissance logician, philosopher, humanist, and teacher, Peter Ramus (1515-72) is best known for his attack on Aristotelian logic, his radical pedagogical theories, and his new interpretation for the canon of rhetoric. His work, published in Latin and translated into many languages, has influenced the study of Renaissance literature, rhetoric, education, logic, and--more recently--media studies.
Considered the most important work of Walter Ong's career, "Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue" is an elegant review of the history of Ramist scholarship and Ramus's quarrels with Aristotle. A key influence on Marshall McLuhan, with whom Ong enjoys the status of honorary guru among technophiles, this challenging study remains the most detailed account of Ramus's method ever published. Out of print for more than a decade, this book--with a new foreword by Adrian Johns--is a canonical text for enthusiasts of media, Renaissance literature, and intellectual history.

In "The Nature of the Book," a tour de force of cultural history, Adrian Johns constructs an entirely original and vivid picture of print culture and its many arenas--commercial, intellectual, political, and individual.
"A compelling exposition of how authors, printers, booksellers and readers competed for power over the printed page. . . . The richness of Mr. Johns's book lies in the splendid detail he has collected to describe the world of books in the first two centuries after the printing press arrived in England."--Alberto Manguel, "Washington Times"
" A] mammoth and stimulating account of the place of print in the history of knowledge. . . . Johns has written a tremendously learned primer."--D. Graham Burnett, "New Republic"
"A detailed, engrossing, and genuinely eye-opening account of the formative stages of the print culture. . . . This is scholarship at its best."--Merle Rubin, "Christian Science Monitor"
"The most lucid and persuasive account of the new kind of knowledge produced by print. . . . A work to rank alongside McLuhan."--John Sutherland, "The Independent"
"Entertainingly written. . . . The most comprehensive account available . . . well documented and engaging."--Ian Maclean, "Times Literary Supplement"

Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized--one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood.

"Piracy" explores the intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the twenty-first. Brimming with broader implications for today's debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns's book ultimately argues that piracy has always stood at the center of our attempts to reconcile creativity and commerce--and that piracy has been an engine of social, technological, and intellectual innovations as often as it has been their adversary. From Cervantes to Sonny Bono, from Maria Callas to Microsoft, from Grub Street to Google, no chapter in the story of piracy evades Johns's graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.

Co ma do powiedzenia upadly aniol, ktory obwiescil swiatu swoje istnienie. O co bys go zapytal, gdyby usiadl przed toba i zaproponowal filizanke spelnienia. Gdyby sie objawil w zapomnianym przez Boga swiecie jako jedyny zbawca i doreczyciel ukojenia? Co zrobi mloda dziewczyna o niewinnych marzeniach w swiecie brutalnej technologii, co wybierze wybierajac, pomiedzy miloscia do swojej przyjaciolki a moralnym echem w swym sercu. Kto ja przekona do prawdy, obwieszczane zlo czy zapomniana swietosc? W swiecie gdzie przyszlosc jest terazniejszoscia a dlugosc zycia mozna sobie kupic, gdzie Bog jest zapomnianym wstydliwym mitem a z Diablem mozna podpisac lukratywna umowe biznesowa. Co zrobi...gdy swiat, ktory stal sie kolebka zepsucia splugawil jej cialo i dusze...Thriller ze szczypta kryminalu, erotyk z kropelka science-fiction, wiara z okruchem horroru.