A History of the Book in America, Volume 4—Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940 (review)

This book is about much more than its series title immediately suggests. As part of the five-volume A History of the Book in America series, it is in fact part of a monumental undertaking that traces not only the history of the book but also other printed materials such as magazines and newspapers over the entirety of American history. Considered as an overall project, the History of the Book in America series represents something on the order of the Oxford History of the United States for the history of print media in the United States, presenting a nuanced yet clear narrative that incorporates the latest specialist literature into an account that is accessible to scholars across fields in American history.

Under the editorship of Carl Kaestle and Janice Radway, this volume focuses on the period from 1880 to 1940, following the pattern of the other works in the series by having a thematic introduction framing a series of essays about various aspects of the production, distribution, and reception of printed materials. In the twenty-six essays in the book, individual authors provide excellent illustrations of what Kaestle argues is the "thesis of this volume. . . that American culture from 1880 to 1940 was increasingly a 'culture of print,' that is, a culture that was knit together and defined by the printed word" (p. 24). Enabled by advances in papermaking and printing technology and motivated by demand from an increasingly literate audience, publishers produced an exploding volume of printed materials in the sixty years after 1880: newspaper circulation mushroomed from roughly three million daily papers in 1880 to about forty million papers in 1940. Book publishing also expanded at a dramatic rate, and nationally successful magazines like Ladies Home Journal by 1900 had monthly circulations of over one million. New technologies also enabled printed materials to have new and more vibrant layouts and typefaces, and they allowed the mass circulation of photographic images as well. Across specific products, print became big business after 1880. Publishing corporations made hefty profits as they both helped create a national consumer market through the advertising they printed and also encouraged a kind of national public as they distributed an unprecedented volume of books, magazines, and newspapers.

What makes this volume so valuable is that this story about the rise of the national market for print is supplemented by rich analyses of both local- and niche-oriented publications and by considerations of the various ways that individuals and groups interacted with printed texts. Indeed, the overall sense that one takes away from this book is that, even in an age of "incorporation" and the creation of a national consumer market, there was an incredible diversity of materials available to read and that these materials were in turn read in diverse ways. Alongside metropolitan newspapers, mass-market magazines, and paperback books, American readers had easy access to local newspapers, foreign-language newspapers, and books and periodicals aimed at virtually all ethnic groups and religious denominations. Academic and scientific publishing grew rapidly, and, some periods of legal repression notwithstanding, politically radical publications could be found across the country as well. In the production and sale of newspapers, magazines, and books, publisher activity combined with voracious audience demand created a rapidly expanding print marketplace characterized as much by idiosyncrasy as it was by homogenization.

Moreover, as the essays here collectively suggest, regardless of the publication in question, reading was ultimately a profoundly variable experience. For reasons of geography, literacy level, taste, race, gender, or creed, individuals chose to read different sorts of materials, and their backgrounds and reading habits engendered a diversity of reader responses. Some might read for entertainment, others for enlightenment. Some...