George Nash's Conservative Intellectual Movement and Communities of Discourse

When I picked up a copy of George H. Nash's indispensable history of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 at the local used book store, I got more than I bargained for.

Sure, I got a pretty good deal on the book itself:  I paid $9.99 for a near-perfect hardback copy of the 1996 edition.  The pages are tight and clean, there is almost no shelf-wear, and the dust jacket is just ever so slightly bumped at the corners.  It's a really nice copy.  This is because I haven't started reading it yet.  I am a tough, tactile reader of the books I own:  I double-dog-ear pages, and I write rapid-fire marginalia like nobody's business.  By the time I am done with George Nash, this book will look like cannon fodder -- or, I suppose, canon fodder, as I bring Nash's text into conversation with the other books on my reading list. 

What I didn't bargain for when I bought Nash's text was the window that this particular copy of the book would give me into a different kind of conversation taking place within and across distinct communities of discourse -- to borrow and use David Hollinger's apt and helpful mode of analysis.  I need to understand the relationship between the ideas Nash discusses and the way that Nash discusses them in the context of these overlapping discourse communities.  Thankfully, Dr. Nash himself was available to offer some insight via email, which I am glad to share with our readers.

Tucked inside the front cover of the copy that I purchased is what appears to be a hand-written note, along with a business card from Brent Tantillo, (erstwhile) Program Director for The Collegiate Network of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (founded, as our readers know, by William F. Buckley, about whom I have written here).  The ISI published the 1996 edition of Nash's text.*

The note is written on 3.5" x 4.5" pre-printed cardstock.  At the top of the card is the ISI logo and name.  At the bottom is a pre-printed generic message -- "This might interest you" -- over Tantillo's name.  The card, it seems, was designed to be inserted in complimentary copies of books.  Sure enough, in the blank space between the ISI logo and the pre-printed signature, Tantillo wrote, "Here is a book that I thought you would enjoy. Merry Christmas! Brent."

The fact that there's no addressee on the card leads me to believe that the diligent Mr. Tantillo probably hand wrote stacks of these cards to be inserted into ISI publications sent out as Christmas gifts.  But how many stacks of cards?  Which publications, besides this one? Which Christmas?  I don't know, and I haven't yet tried to find out.  I do know that Brent Tantillo is no longer with the ISI -- per this profile page, he left that institution to co-found The Democracy Project, to which Wilfred M. McClay is also a contributor.  A simple email to Mr. Tantillo might answer many of my questions, and I may yet send such a message.  So far, everyone to whom I have written regarding my research has been more than happy to assist me, and I doubt Tantillo would react any differently.

However, what I really wanted to know was what George Nash might think about the relationship between his scholarship and the ISI's mission.

So I asked him.

My colleague Andrew Hartman was kind enough to introduce me to Nash via email, and Dr. Nash very graciously agreed to answer my questions.

Here's what I asked:

I'm working on a piece for the USIH blog about how books -- the real, physical objects -- occupy a unique place in the study of intellectual history, because they simultaneously testify to the history of ideas, the social/cultural history of intellectuals, the material conditions of intellectual discourse, and the shifting boundaries of various discourse communities.

The occasion for my post is a felicitous find I made at the local Half Price Books store:  a hardback copy of The Conservative Intellectual Movement (1996 reprint by ISI).  Inside the book was a business card and a hand-written note from an ISI staffer indicating that this particular copy of the book had been sent out as a Christmas gift.  

So I'm interested in thinking about the material history of your crucially important and influential text (which of course is on my exam reading list for US intellectual and cultural history), and the ways that this publishing/circulation history is part of the intellectual history of the very movement whose developments you trace.  

Specifically, here are some things I'm wondering about:  

-your choice to reissue the book with ISI rather than with an academic press.  This is an unconventional move, it seems, and I'd like to understand what kinds of factors you weighed in making that decision.  In what ways was this decision aimed at finding a wider audience, and in what ways was it aimed at finding a different audience?  Did the choice of this press as opposed to a university press or academic publisher come under criticism from the academy?  Should it have?

-the fact that your book was distributed by ISI not just as a significant work of history but (presumably) as a text that would further the mission/goals of ISI.  I am guessing that your decision to publish with them was taken in large part out of agreement with the basic aims of the organization.  In this sense your scholarship is formally and explicitly a part of the story that your scholarship tells.  This strikes me as an interesting dynamic, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

-your thoughts more generally on critically engaged history.  If you happen to follow the conversations on the USIH blog, you may have seen much recent discussion about the place of irony in history, the moral commitment of historians, etc.  Is publishing with ISI sufficiently indicative of your larger "moral commitment," and do you see that as promising or problematic or really irrelevant to the larger project of your scholarship? 

Here is George Nash's very helpful and informative reply, which he has granted me permission to share with our readers:

Regarding the publishing history of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945: as you know, Basic Books published it in hard cover in 1976 and in paperback in 1979. Basic Books kept the volume in print until 1988 or so, when I was informed that the book was no longer selling enough to justify its continuance in print.  I think the publisher and I thought that twelve years was a pretty respectable run.  In any case, in 1988 Basic Books let the book go out of print, and publishing rights (except for Spanish translation) reverted to me. 

In the next few years I gave some thought to reissuing the book with a new publisher, but I was quite busy with my multivolume biography of Herbert Hoover and did not pursue the matter too actively.

Then, in 1994 (as I remember), I was approached by a representative  of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).  He explained that ISI was establishing a book publishing division and would be honored to reprint my book as its first (or one of its first) offerings. I was already familiar with ISI, of course, since I had written about it in my book and had lectured a few times to academically oriented audiences under its auspices. 

The more I thought about this proposed publishing arrangement, the more fitting it seemed. First, ISI (founded in the 1950s) was an organization of long standing whose tone and clientele were broadly academic. As a prospective book publisher, it resembled my first publisher, Basic Books, in seeking to disseminate serious books aimed not only at a tiny coterie of specialists but at what my first editor at Basic Books called "the intellectually oriented general reader." (In ISI's case, these would mostly be college students.) Second, by the mid-1990s ISI had an expanding national network of thousands of affiliated professors, graduate students, and undergraduates.  It seemed to me that these were precisely the sort of people most likely, in the first instance, to read a new and updated edition of the book, nearly twenty years after its initial publication.  That is, the principal new readership of the book would probably be a rising generation of politically aware and intellectually curious college and graduate students of the kind ISI reached out to in its programs every year.  I suspected that ISI would produce a volume accessible to this emerging demographic (unlike many university presses that might be content to print just a small number of copies at a price well beyond the reach of most undergraduates or college course adoption.) 

I think my judgment proved to be correct.  In 1996 ISI Books published an attractive, reasonably priced, hardcover, new edition with updated material that I wrote for it.  In 1998 the paperback edition appeared.  In 2006 ISI Books published an updated "30th anniversary edition" in paperback.  During these years a growing number of politically minded students (and not just those who self-identified as conservative) discovered the book and found it pertinent to their interests. The book found its way onto reading lists for graduate and undergraduate study in the areas of American political and intellectual history and the rapidly developing field of "conservative studies."  Major political phenomena of recent times ( the "Reagan Revolution," the Tea Party, etc.) obviously have had much to do with the book's continuing relevance and circulation. During this period the book has also appealed to a number of people (Left and Right) in the journalistic/commentary community, as E. J. Dionne, among others, has publicly attested.  I am not aware of any criticism in the academy of my decision to permit ISI to republish the book. 

ISI, as you probably know, has now been existence for sixty years.  Its motto is "To Educate for Liberty," and it conceives its mission as educational and intellectual in nature.  In addition to conducting an energetic program of academic and "public intellectual"--type book publishing (in association, I believe, with the University of Chicago Press), it publishes intellectually focused periodicals (notably Modern Age  and the Intercollegiate Review), awards fellowships to graduate students, facilitates undergraduate study clubs and summer institutes focused on the Great Books and themes of western civilization (among other subjects), and sponsors numerous public lectures a year by its affiliated scholars. It has been called an "alternative university," bringing to campuses ideas and perspectives that it finds too often underrepresented in American academic discourse.  I believe that approximately 60,000 to 80,000 faculty and students are in its network at present.

My own association with ISI consists of my being on its mailing list, writing occasionally for its journals, serving on the editorial advisory board for Modern Age, lecturing from time to time under ISI's auspices (most recently to an undergraduate political philosophy study group at the University of Wisconsin), and publishing two volumes with ISI Books.  My name also appears in the new online ISI Speakers Bureau, which was announced a week or so ago. Here are two links to this:

http://faculty.isi.org/speakers   

and 

http://faculty.isi.org/speakers/index/browse/theme_id/2

As you will see, ISI's affiliated academic lecturers include, besides myself, a number of persons probably familiar to the USIH blog, such as the historians Wilfred McClay and Brian Domitrovic.

Since it might be of interest to you, I also enclose a link to an interview I did for an ISI website a couple of years ago: 

http://faculty.isi.org/blog/post/view/id/303%20http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1803&loc=r

As you can infer from the above, I think well of ISI and have been pleased to contribute, when invited, to its educational programs (time permitting).  This has bought me into acquaintance with a number of studious and impressive undergraduates and graduate students throughout the United States--mostly (but not exclusively) conservatives eager to explore their intellectual roots and civilizational heritage in a rigorous way.  As an independent scholar or (as I sometimes put it) an academic without portfolio, I have always been free to say what I want at ISI forums. I am not an ISI employee and in fact lecture widely at non-ISI gatherings as well (such as academic conferences).  I do not know where all this may rank in the scale of "moral commitment," but as a historian of American conservatism (and other subjects) I have always aspired to write works that can be read with profit by people across the ideological spectrum, regardless of their opinion of the subject. In academia I am known as a conservative intellectual, and I willingly accept the designation. But this has not precluded my striving for fairness, balance, and objectivity in my professional work, both written and oral.  This has been part of my moral commitment as a historian. 

I am grateful for this thoughtful and thorough reply, and glad to share it with our readers.  The reply highlights some intersections and interconnections between distinct but overlapping communities of discourse -- critical scholarly inquiry and conservative cultural advocacy -- to which I will do well to pay attention as an American intellectual and cultural historian.  Further, it gives me a most welcome insight into the ethos of a particular, and particularly important, historian of this era in American intellectual history.  Finally, it serves to confirm my sense of the basic generosity and collegiality of the historical profession and of the academy more generally.

Without exception, all those to whom I have written in connection with my work, from the most junior scholars to the most eminent historians in the field, have been unfailingly gracious and generous in answering my questions and providing suggestions for further research.  In this sense, George Nash's specific response to my particular inquiry is broadly, hearteningly typical.  His answer not only says a great deal about his own sense of his subject matter and his own ethos as a historian; it also exemplifies the ethos of the academy as a hospitable home to scholars from distinct yet overlapping communities of discourse.  As communities of discourse go, the field of U.S. intellectual history suits me just fine; I like where I have landed.  And the intellectual generosity of scholars like George Nash in answering the pointed questions of this inquisitive grad student serves as yet another reminder of why I  think I am in such good company.

And just think:  all this insight has come my way before I have so much as turned to the first page of Nash's crucially important book.  There's no telling where that text itself will take me -- but I'll no doubt be able to retrace my steps, one margin-note and double-dog-eared page at a time.

______________

*In a follow-up email, Dr. Nash offered this helpful advice: "The 2006 edition, which I mentioned in my response, contains several new features: a new Preface, a new Conclusion, and a new Bibliographical Postscript.  Also, for the first time in the history of this book, its footnotes are placed at the bottom of the page--a feature I heartily approve. So you may want to take a look at the later edition at some point."  Sold! The footnotes alone would be enough to convince me.  

Reflections on the "Books That Shaped America": Questions, Answers, and More Questions

The Library of Congress has fashioned an exhibit that will surely be of interest to intellectual historians. The exhibit, "Books That Shaped America," lists 88 works that the LOC calls "a starting point—a way to spark a national conversation on books and their importance in Americans’ lives, and, indeed, in shaping our nation."  They add (bolds mine):

The titles featured here (by American authors) have had a profound effect on American life, but they are by no means the only influential ones. And they are certainly not a list of the “best” American books, because that, again, is a matter of strong and diverse opinion. Curators and experts from throughout the Library of Congress contributed their choices, but there was much debate—even agony—in having to remove worthy titles from a much larger list in order to accommodate the physical constraints of this exhibition space.

Some of the titles on display have been the source of great controversy, even derision, yet they nevertheless shaped Americans’ views of their world and often the world’s view of the United States. As you go through this exhibition, we hope the books you see will inspire you to think of other “books that shaped America” and that you will share your choices for future lists at www.loc.gov/bookfest. Please tell us how you think your book shaped America.

This online survey adds to the exhibit by asking viewers a few questions, the first of which is as follows: "Which THREE of these books do you think shaped America the most profoundly?"


According to the Chicago Tribune article wherein I learned of the exhibit, it appears most of the press release above was authored by James H. Billington, the thirteenth Librarian of the United States Congress (sworn in September 1987). Billington was trained as a historian (PhD, Oxford Balliol) and taught at both Harvard and Princeton from 1957-1973.

With only a little reflection, the most surprising thing about the list is that it is ahistorical. The list does not specify whether we are to judge these "books that shaped America" based on America today or on the America affected by the book shortly after the publication of each. I assume they mean today---which makes the exercise exceedingly difficult for both the professional historian and the lay person. What intelligent thing(s) are we supposed to say about Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in 1852, in relation to 2012?

All lists are controlled by space. That is one the things that makes them controversial. That limitation exacerbates perceived poor choices. Limitations give rise to complaints. As such, I wondered why the LOC stopped at 88 books? The press release above notes that "exhibition space controlled the size of their list. Fair enough. To show actual books, one must deal with the material size of the book, exhibit cases, room for text, and room for viewers to maneuver. So those factors probably explain the number 88. But those factors do not absolve one from poor selection criteria---for poor exhibit conception.

Because of these factors I looked at the online survey and threw up my hands in confusion. The selection criteria are not outlined in the obvious parts of the exhibit through which I surfed. Even so, I went ahead gave an answer to the first question in order to see the rest of the survey. I chose The Private Life of the late Benjamin Franklin  (more commonly called The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin---I have no idea why they chose to use the more obscure title), Thoreau's Walden, and Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (for whimsy's sake).  


Here is question two: "Which ONE of these books had the most impact on YOU, personally, rather than America as a whole."  Here I chose Melville's Moby Dick.  Question three, on this same page, asks "Please describe how this book changed you." I answered in a brief fashion to move the survey along: "I first read this in high school and it opened my mind to the complexities possible in a novel, in one's private life, and in the process of chasing our goals."

Question four asks: "What book that is NOT on our list should be? (Title and author, please.)"

Can anyone predict my answer?  ... ... Again, I chose to have a little fun here:

Mortimer J. Adler's *How to Read a Book* (1940).

Question five asks: " Tell us why your nominee should be added to the list."  Here was my off-the-cuff, lightly edited answer (edited more here than there):

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After its publication in 1940, Adler's *How to Read a Book* set in motion a chain of events with no conclusion in sight. Indeed, this survey and the and the "Books That Shaped America" exhibit is a part of that historical chain. How? What are the events to which you are [I am] referring? Here's how---as briefly as possible: 

Adler's book laid out a plan to improve upon the population's basic literacy skills. He linked the need for improvement with an imperative for thoughtful citizenship. At the end of the book he provided a list of books (Western in nature) on which one should practice the skills he laid out in *How to Read a Book*. That list, known now as "The Great Books," inspired thousands of people in the 1940s---diverse in terms of wealth, gender, religion, and race---to set up Great Books reading groups. One of those readers was William Benton, who used his position (i.e. CEO) at Encyclopaedia Britannica to hire Adler (among others) to publish the *The Great Books of the Western World*. That set sold thousands of copies, but Great Books reading groups also proliferated due to the work of the Great Books Foundation (which also lists Adler as a founder). The great books idea has since inspired regular readers (young and old), as well as college students via their professors, to challenge themselves to read the very best books ever published. The great books idea has also undergone renovation. In the wake of a heightened awareness of American diversity that has occurred since the 1950s and 1960s, today the great books idea exists in the form of a plurality of lists about the best books. Even so, readers are still living with the challenge to read the very best books---to obtain the highest form of literacy possible in relation to being both the best thinker and citizen. And the great books idea lives on in college curricula and in library-sponsored reading groups for general citizens outside of education institutions.

I would argue that Adler's book inspired the creators of this very exhibit. We have been asking ourselves all through the twentieth century how we can navigate, in time with our limited energies and life span, the plethora of books in print. This exhibit and Adler's list(s) provide starting points for endless revision in relation to our changed historical circumstances.

This is why Adler's *How to Read a Book* should be on your list. It is "the book" which has challenged [people] since publication to choose the best books for close reading (and rereading). It is the book which linked excellence in reading with excellence in citizenship. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

So my answer was not that brief. And with it I ended up taking the survey more seriously than I intended. As for the rest of the survey, questions six through eight asked demographic questions: What is your state and/or country? What is your age? What is your gender?

How about you? What are your thoughts on the exhibit? What of my nominations and answers to the survey questions? - TL

The Future of the Book

In connection with my post from two weeks ago about the fate of the codex in a digital age, I found this article from today's New York Times especially pertinent:  "In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books."

It's an endearing story about a guy in southern northern California who is taking it upon himself to preserve a copy of every single book.  While his project itself may seem Noahically naive -- all those combustible books in one big wooden warehouse? -- the motivation behind it seems sensible enough:

Mr. Kahle had the idea for the physical archive while working on the Internet Archive, which has digitized two million books. With a deep dedication to traditional printing — one of his sons is named Caslon, after the 18th-century type designer — he abhorred the notion of throwing out a book once it had been scanned. The volume that yielded the digital copy was special. 

And perhaps essential. What if, for example, digitization improves and we need to copy the books again? 

“Microfilm and microfiche were once a utopian vision of access to all information,” Mr. Kahle noted, “but it turned out we were very glad we kept the books.”

The conversion -- or, as some would have it, transubstantiation -- of printed texts to some other medium is not new, nor is the destruction of those texts once they have been scanned. 


I have nothing against digitized, indexed, full-text searchable copies of printed works.  Scan them all, I say.  But for heaven's sake -- or the future's -- keep a hard copy. 

As for me, I will not be sending (or willing) my library, such as it is, to the Physical Archive of the Internet Archive.   I'm a big believer in redundancy.  So I will find someone who wants my books for keeps, and who knows how to use them, and I'll hand them along.

In the meantime, if the zombie apocalypse strikes, I have plenty of reading material that can double as a barricade.  And, unlike Burgess Meredith, I also have a backup pair of glasses.

The New Hieroglyphics

As regular readers of this blog  -- and former readers of my (now mothballed) personal blog -- are probably aware, I am profoundly ambivalent about the digital humanities.  This ambivalence derives in part from unfamiliarity. When it comes to the digital humanities, I am not yet clear on exactly what they are (or can be), exactly what they do, and exactly what they mean or can mean for both the scholarly enterprise and the wider cultural work of people collectively making sense of the world.

I'm working on remedying my admitted ignorance of DH as an academic discipline, but I still have some homework to do.  In the meantime, my colleagues who are digital humanists have been wonderfully patient about educating me.  Indeed, I expect to learn a thing or two from comments on this post.* 

As I understand them, most apologists for and practitioners of the digital humanities envision their discipline in a both/and kind of way.  In other words, the digital humanities are not a replacement for pen-and-ink scholarship, but a vast expansion and extension of the possibilities of all kinds of scholarship, including scholarship based upon and ultimately aimed at producing good old-fashioned printed texts.  I see nothing that is troubling and much that is promising about this approach.

Nevertheless, I have occasionally come across some apologists for the digital humanities who predict that print and print culture -- in a word, the book -- will eventually become obsolete, and who seem to think that this development is A Good Thing.  Indeed, some of them would like to speed the process along.

This hoped-for obsolescence of the book strikes me as a Very Bad Idea.

Now, I'm a historian, so by definition and inclination I am decidedly not in the business of predicting the future.  ("Not my table!")  But there's something unsettling for me about some people's hope for the demise of the codex.  I call this unsettling something the "hieratic potential" embedded in digital texts:  the possibility that written knowledge will once again become the exclusive property of (something like a postmodern secular version of) a priesthood.  I'm not really thinking of the pre-Reformation priesthood; I'm thinking more along the lines of the ancient Egyptian priesthood.


As Carlo Ginzburg so deftly demonstrates in The Cheese and the Worms, during the Reformation, common people gained access to texts which had once been the purview of the privileged and the priests. People with no special training beyond the ability to read and write could (mis)read those texts in ways that expanded their mental, moral and material universes, making them a menace to the hierarchy.  

Menocchio's ability to acquire a book, read it, and pass it on to someone else serves as a stunning synecdoche summing up a profoundly transformative historical moment.  The printing press -- a proto-industrial technology -- rendered written texts relatively cheap and suddenly, simply, widely accessible.  Beyond literacy (no small thing), Menocchio and the readers of his time required no special tools to access the words on those newly available pages except sunlight, candle-light, or firelight.  And sharing that knowledge was something they could accomplish with no technological mediation.  It was a matter of placing a text into a new reader's hands.

To this day, the technology for producing or reading a written text remains simple, robust, and nearly universally accessible.  It's nice if you own your own printing press -- it sure came in handy for William Lloyd Garrison.  But, at their simplest level, the tools for the production and dissemination of text-based knowledge are easily obtained and easily used. Paper, ink, a light source -- that's pretty much all you need to write with, or to read by.

This doesn't mean that all readers or potential readers have universal access to knowledge.   Economic advantage, advanced education, critical disciplinary training which has only been possible because we do not usually have to worry about where our next meal is coming from -- these inequalities allow some of us access to the text -- to its power -- in ways that are not open to others. And many are the gatekeepers who want to keep things as they are.

One of the most admirable goals of activists in the digital humanities is the goal of open access: moving "the text" out from behind the iron gates and ivied walls and paywalls, detaching it from some of the protective structures which make it unavailable and therefore unassailable -- the special collections room, the closed-stack library, the archive, the restricted-access database -- and opening it up to the scrutiny of anyone who has the basic ability to read it on a screen.

On a screen.

That screen adds a subtle but significant layer of mediation between the reader and the text, something altogether different from and deeper than the distance between the reader and the hand-written or press-printed page. 

Getting the texts from the library shelves to the ereader screen requires encoding them. They are translated into an inscrutable language -- a type of writing decipherable only by computer scientists and software engineers who, thankfully, design these reading tools to also decode for us what has been encoded.

What I see happening here, though, is the development of an elite system of writing, a new kind of hieroglyphics. Knowledge is being preserved in a language which is illegible without access to highly specialized training and expensive equipment. We are embedding texts in a coded language inscribed on microchips, and encasing those microchips in a proprietary system which controls how and what we may read.   Furthermore, the ability to get those texts from the servers on which they reside to our own screens -- Kindle, Nook, laptop -- depends upon how and under what conditions and by whose permission we can use the internet. 

So what happens if we lose (or are denied) the ability to download and read the coded texts?  What happens when someone decides that something you have downloaded onto your Kindle -- say, 1984 or Animal Farm -- is just not suitable reading material any more?  Yes, Amazon.com zapped those downloads due to an apparent copyright infringement -- a presumably legitimate reason for an astonishingly Orwellian demonstration of how easily digital knowledge can be "disappeared."

After over five hundred years of widely accessible "open source" coding -- Gutenberg's cosmologically transformative gift, a fast and reliable process for producing and distributing words on a page -- we are heading down a path that makes not just the production and distribution of texts, but their very reception, proprietary. We are de-democratizing knowledge, even as we talk about and advocate for increased access, because we are making that access dependent on the use of a proprietary coded language encased in manufactured products whose control remains in the hands of those who sold them, not those who bought them. And even if those manufactured products or distribution networks become so cheap as to be nearly ubiquitous -- free internet for everyone, free ereaders for all -- they will always be an inescapable mediating technology between the reader and the text, a technology that the reader cannot circumvent.

When there are no more printing presses -- when the books are gone, when all old knowledge has been digitized, and all new knowledge is digitally distributed -- then there will be only one way to access powerful and empowering knowledge, a way that is mediated (and monitored and limited) by corporations and governments who develop and control the proprietary delivery systems of all things digital. Who controls that technology? Who designs those tools?  For whom will they be made available, and under what conditions?  Who will guarantee texts a place on the grid, and who will guarantee us access to the grid as readers?  And who will assure us that even if the grid goes dark, and stays dark for far too long, we can still access the knowledge embedded in those unreadable digital files? 

Or will digital texts become the new hieroglyphics, faint scratchings on the pedestal of a vast colossal wreck of a culture that unwisely abandoned a well-worn instrument of liberation:  printed words on a page, "portable property," books simply -- but not always safely -- passed from one hand to another.



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*Readers of my old blog might recognize some sections of this post, which is a substantial revision of remarks I had made there last year.

FYI: Digital Public Library Of America

Randall Stephens, Editor of Historically Speaking and Chair of the History Department at Eastern Nazarene College, interviewed Robert Darnton, History Professor and director of the Harvard University Library, on creating a "Digital Public Library of America." Excerpts are at the link to the Historical Society's blog, but a video in two parts provides the entire interview. Check it out! - TL

FYI: Digital Public Library Of America

Randall Stephens, Editor of Historically Speaking and Chair of the History Department at Eastern Nazarene College, interviewed Robert Darnton, History Professor and director of the Harvard University Library, on creating a "Digital Public Library of America." Excerpts are at the link to the Historical Society's blog, but a video in two parts provides the entire interview. Check it out! - TL