The Science of Reading: Information, Media, and Mind in Modern America

by Adrian Johns

For the first time, the story of how and why we have plumbed the mysteries of reading, and why it matters today.

 

Reading is perhaps the essential practice of modern civilization. For centuries, it has been seen as key to both personal fulfillment and social progress, and millions today depend on it to participate fully in our society. Yet, at its heart, reading is a surprisingly elusive practice. This book tells for the first time the story of how American scientists and others have sought to understand reading, and, by understanding it, to improve how people do it.



Starting around 1900, researchers—convinced of the urgent need to comprehend a practice central to industrial democracy—began to devise instruments and experiments to investigate what happened to people when they read. They traced how a good reader’s eyes moved across a page of printed characters, and they asked how their mind apprehended meanings as they did so. In schools across the country, millions of Americans learned to read through the application of this science of reading. At the same time, workers fanned out across the land to extend the science of reading into the social realm, mapping the very geography of information for the first time. Their pioneering efforts revealed that the nation’s most pressing problems were rooted in drastic informational inequities, between North and South, city and country, and white and Black—and they suggested ways to tackle those problems.



Today, much of how we experience our information society reflects the influence of these enterprises. This book explains both how the science of reading shaped our age and why, with so-called reading wars still plaguing schools across the nation, it remains bitterly contested.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Books About Books, Education

502 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2023

About the author

Adrian Johns is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Educated at Cambridge University, Johns is a specialist on intellectual property and piracy.

Reviews

[Matt Carton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I have only skimmed the surface here of a subject that merits much more attention,” Johns writes in this penultimate paragraph in this book that is hardly a dip-your-toe-in-the-pool tome (428). It took me three months to read this baby for a reason (and thank goodness for summer break). This book is dense. But it is so worth the journey. As a teacher and a parent and devout reader I am trying to make sense of this brave new world we live in. Johns has opened my eyes to how we got here, and gives us insights into how we should deal with the future of all of this - because that is something we will have to do. This book will stay with me for a while. It’s worth the time and effort.

[Pat Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, it is big and dense and sometimes dry but full of revelations. What reading has been thought to be and how that notion is flexible was an eye opening journey.

[Martha Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually abandoned this book in the first chapter - so my 3 star review is perhaps not accurate. I found it too dense and intense (not reader friendly — which is ironic, maybe? )

[EmG ReadsDaily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very dense, yet informative read exploring literacy and the evolving science of the way humans process information.

This took quite a while for me to work my way through.

[Mark Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 400+ pages, 150 years of reading study and its practical applications are reviewed. Includes interesting discussions of competing schools of Library Science, aircraft cockpit instrumentation design, scoring methods to establish the “readability” of texts, teaching directed toward African Americans, McGuffey readers/Dick and Jane, Marshal McLuhan, Evelyn Wood, PBS’s the Electric Company, Hooked on Phonics, etc. Would be five stars for me but for the length. Certainly five stars for teachers of reading or professionals for whom reading is at the center of their core practice.

[Kelevilin Kimathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science of reading

Reading is core to our acquiring knowledge, understanding how our universe operates and it helps us navigate through normal life. The book looks at the history of reading and efforts made on improving reading speed . However this invaluable skill is threatened by information overload and other screen distractions.

[LRKK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, this is a dense read, though the first chapter is the hardest and you can skim it if you aren’t engaged. There follows a long but fascinating journey though the history of the science of reading that is well worth the effort.

[Kimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this definitely went over my head but what I enjoyed the most was the ‘how’ of reading: how the brain reads, how people learn to read, how and why some people read faster than others and how that’s been measured. What an informative book!

[Roy Kenagy]

DMPL. EXAMINED 2024_02_01. GOOD STUFF ON TECHNICAL INFORMATION SCIENCE ANF READING AUDIBLE_NO LONG AND DENSE.

PURCHASE REQUEST TO DMPL 2023_05_22 https://www.semcoop.com/science-reading

AUTHOR INTRO AT LITHUB: "The Science of Reading traces the emergence, consolidation, and implications of a tradition of research from about 1870 to the present"

ADRIAN JOHNS The Most Mysterious of Arts: On the Science of Reading https://bit.ly/3UpEWGe FOLDER

PW: "delves into how scientists have studied the psychological and physiological processes of reading"

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FT: At the heart of these experiments was the idea that reading is not a passive act. Readers are “active, questing, and cussed subjects who took up printed objects and put them to their own uses”, Johns writes https://on.ft.com/3SlHX7z

CURRENT: Homo Legens Can we move beyond an instrumental approach to reading? https://bit.ly/3SGZW9S

[mono · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dick & Jane perpetually can't read...
Dramatic rituals = prophetic loops
Maybe the end of the world isn't today.

omega - I wonder if memory could be associated with the physical book itself (the size, smell, look, transgressing through the pages). This happened today while reading - i had forgotten almost everything, but when i picked the book up - the setting & characters came back into my mind...