The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way.

In this lecture, New Atlantis contributing editor Alan Jacobs discusses his new book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. His interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you — the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts.