Millions of Americans routinely spend half their working day or more with their hands on keyboards and their minds on audiences - writing so much, in fact, that they have less time and appetite for reading. In this highly anticipated sequel to her award-winning Literacy in American Lives, Deborah Brandt moves beyond laments about the decline of reading to focus on the rise of writing. What happens when writing overtakes reading as the basis of people's daily literate experience? How does a societal shift toward writing affect the ways that people develop their literacy and understand its value? Drawing on recent interviews with people who write every day, Brandt explores this major turn in the development of mass literacy and examines the serious challenges it poses for America's educational mission and civic health.

Literacy in American Lives traces the changing conditions of literacy learning over the past century as they were felt in the lives of ordinary Americans born between 1895 and 1985. The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy have meant to successive generations of Americans and how--as students, workers, parents, and citizens--they have responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education at the start of the twenty-first century.

Literacy in American Lives traces the changing conditions of literacy learning over the past century as they were felt in the lives of ordinary Americans born between 1895 and 1985. The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy have meant to successive generations of Americans and how--as students, workers, parents, and citizens--they have responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education at the start of the twenty-first century.

Millions of Americans routinely spend half their working day or more with their hands on keyboards and their minds on audiences - writing so much, in fact, that they have less time and appetite for reading. In this highly anticipated sequel to her award-winning Literacy in American Lives, Deborah Brandt moves beyond laments about the decline of reading to focus on the rise of writing. What happens when writing overtakes reading as the basis of people's daily literate experience? How does a societal shift toward writing affect the ways that people develop their literacy and understand its value? Drawing on recent interviews with people who write every day, Brandt explores this major turn in the development of mass literacy and examines the serious challenges it poses for America's educational mission and civic health.