The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. For the Internet and digitial generation, the most basic human right is the freedom to read. The Web has indeed brought about a rapid and far-reaching revolution in reading, making a limitless global pool of literature and information available to anyone with a computer. At the same time, however, the threats of censorship, surveillance, and mass manipulation through the media have grown apace. Some of the most important political battles of the twenty-first century have been fought--and will be fought--over the right to read. Will it be adequately protected by constitutional guarantees and freedom of information laws? Or will it be restricted by very wealthy individuals and very powerful institutions? And given increasingly sophisticated methods of publicity and propaganda, how much of what we read can we believe? This book surveys the history of independent sceptical reading, from antiquity to the present. It tells the stories of heroic efforts at self-education by disadvantaged people in all parts of the world. It analyzes successful reading promotion campaigns throughout history (concluding with Oprah Winfrey) and explains why they succeeded. It also explores some disturbing current trends, such as the reported decay of attentive reading, the disappearance of investigative journalism, 'fake news', the growth of censorship, and the pervasive influence of advertisers and publicists on the media--even on scientific publishing. For anyone who uses libraries and Internet to find out what the hell is going on, this book is a guide, an inspiration, and a warning.

Readers' Liberation: The Literary Agenda

Literature & Fiction

Rose, Jonathan

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Three unprecedented large-scale democratic experiments have recently taken place. Citizen assemblies on electoral reform were conducted in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. Groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. In each case, the participants spent almost an entire year learning about electoral systems, consulting the public, deliberating, debating, and ultimately deciding what specific institution should be adopted. When Citizens Decide uses these unique cases to examine claims about citizens' capacity for democratic deliberation and active engagement in policy-making. It offers empirical insight into numerous debates and provides answers to a series of key questions: 1) Are ordinary citizens able to decide about a complex issue? Are their decisions reasonable? 2) Who takes part in such proceedings? Are they dominated by people dissatisfied by the status quo? 3) Do some citizens play a more prominent role than others? Are decisions driven by the most vocal or most informed members? 4) Did the participants decide by themselves? Were they influenced by staff, political parties, interest groups, or the public hearings? 5) Does participation in a deliberative process foster citizenship? Did participants become more trusting, tolerant, open-minded, civic-minded, interested in politics, and active in politics? 6) How do the other political actors react? Can the electorate accept policy proposals made by a group of ordinary citizens?The analyses rely upon various types of evidence about both the inner workings of the assemblies and the reactions toward them outside: multi-wave panel surveys of assembly members, content analysis of newspaper coverage, and public opinion survey data. The lessons drawn from this research are relevant to those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy.Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigor. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin; Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia; and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

When Citizens Decide: Lessons from Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform (Comparative Politics)

Blais, André

Fournier, Patrick

Carty, R. Kenneth

van der Kolk, Henk

Legal Theory & Systems

The urgent demand for housing after World War I fueled a boom in residential construction that led to historic peaks in home ownership. Foreclosures at the time were rare, and when they did happen, lenders could quickly recoup their losses by selling into a strong market. But no mortgage system is equipped to deal with credit problems on the scale of the Great Depression. As foreclosures quintupled, it became clear that the mortgage system of the 1920s was not up to the task, and borrowers, lenders, and real estate professionals sought action at the federal level.            Well Worth Saving tells the story of the disastrous housing market during the Great Depression and the extent to which an immensely popular New Deal relief program, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), was able to stem foreclosures by buying distressed mortgages from lenders and refinancing them. Drawing on historical records and modern statistical tools, Price Fishback, Jonathan Rose, and Kenneth Snowden investigate important unanswered questions to provide an unparalleled view of the mortgage loan industry throughout the 1920s and early ’30s. Combining this with the stories of those involved, the book offers a clear understanding of the HOLC within the context of the housing market in which it operated, including an examination of how the incentives and behaviors at play throughout the crisis influenced the effectiveness of policy.            More than eighty years after the start of the Great Depression, when politicians have called for similar programs to quell the current mortgage crisis, this accessible account of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation holds invaluable lessons for our own time.

Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership (National Bureau of Economic Research Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development)

Business & Money

Fishback, Price V.

Snowden, Kenneth

Economics

University of Chicago Press

Book History is the annual journal of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Inc. (SHARP).Book History is devoted to every aspect of the history of the book, broadly defined as the history of the creation, dissemination, and the reception of script and print. Book History publishes research on the social, economic, and cultural history of authorship, editing, printing, the book arts, publishing, the book trade, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, copyright, censorship, literary agents, libraries, literary criticism, canon formation, literacy, literacy education, reading habits, and reader response.

Book History, Vol. 3: 2000

Greenspan, Ezra

Penn State University Press

Making Pictures in Our Heads: Government Advertising in Canada (Praeger Series in Political Communication)

Marketing & Sales

Praeger

Rose uses excerpts from advertising campaigns and government documents obtained through access to information legislation and archival data, much of which has been recently declassified and never before published, in this first comprehensive book-length investigation of state advertising. While its focus is on Canada, the book will be of interest to researchers of communications, politics, or advertising in any nation whose government advertises.

Which books did the British working classes read--and how did they read them? How did they respond to canonical authors, penny dreadfuls, classical music, school stories, Shakespeare, Marx, Hollywood movies, imperialist propaganda, the Bible, the BBC, the Bloomsbury Group? What was the quality of their classroom education? How did they educate themselves? What was their level of cultural literacy: how much did they know about politics, science, history, philosophy, poetry, and sexuality? Who were the proletarian intellectuals, and why did they pursue the life of the mind? These intriguing questions, which until recently historians considered unanswerable, are addressed in this book. Using innovative research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes tracks the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. It offers a new method for cultural historians--an "audience history" that recovers the responses of readers, students, theatergoers, filmgoers, and radio listeners. Jonathan Rose provides an intellectual history of people who were not expected to think for themselves, told from their perspective. He draws on workers' memoirs, oral history, social surveys, opinion polls, school records, library registers, and newspapers. Through its novel and challenging approach to literary history, the book gains access to politics, ideology, popular culture, and social relationships across two centuries of British working-class experience.

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

History

Europe

Yale University Press

This intriguing book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers' memoirs, social surveys, library registers and more, the author discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves and what they knew. 'Vast in scope and absorbing in every detail. As you read it, the air fills with the voices of the long unheard.'-John Carey, The Sunday Times 'Rose's book is a brilliant and often moving record... It deserves its place alongside writers who have yielded important new insights into our cultural ancestry and who shed light on ourselves.'-Ian Jack, The Daily Telegraph 'Brilliantly readable.'-Philip Pullman, The Daily Mail 'Deeply inspiring... It should be read with minute attention by all educationists and politicians: and, indeed, by anyone with an interest in the future of our civilization.'-The Sunday Telegraph 'A passionate work of staggering ambition.'-Wall Street Journal 'This is an incomparable book: scholarly to a scruple; majestic in its 100-year reach; ardent in its reaffirmation of faith in what good books, splendid music and fine art may do to turn a people's history into a long revolution on behalf of liberty, equality and truth.'-The Independent

World

Now in its second edition, this landmark book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers’ memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface uncovers the author’s journey into labor history, and its rewarding link to intellectual history.

Title: The Literary Churchill( Author Reader Actor) Binding: Hardcover Author: JonathanRose Publisher: YaleUniversityPress

The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rose, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rose, Jonathan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rose, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Readers' Liberation: The Literary Agenda

When Citizens Decide: Lessons from Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform (Comparative Politics)

Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership (National Bureau of Economic Research Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development)

Book History, Vol. 3: 2000

Making Pictures in Our Heads: Government Advertising in Canada (Praeger Series in Political Communication)

Making Pictures in Our Heads: Government Advertising in Canada (Praeger Series in Political Communication)

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor