Katariina Kottonen’s Reviews > Amusing Ourselves to Death > Status Update

I love this book. I love this book! It is written with such humbling erudition, with such passion for its subject, with such masterful possession of language that it is impossible not to enjoy it.

Allan Nevins (1890–1971), American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and biographies of American statesmen and magnates.

[NB! Here and earlier, the source of biographical information in my notes is either Wikipedia or Britannica; the former more often than the latter.]

Charles Beard: referring to Charles A. Beard (1874–1948), American historian, professor at Columbia University. Beard's works included a radical re-evaluation of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whom he believed to be more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles.

"The modern idea of testing a reader's 'comprehension', as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?"

H-O: the abbreviation stands for Hornby's Oats, an oat milling company founded by Alexander Hornby in New York, in the 1880s. The advertising for H-O oatmeal, the main product, was ubiquitous into the 1930s.

Fulling-Mill: 'fulling mill', a mill in which cloth is fulled.

'...the history of newspaper advertising in America may be considered, all by itself, as a metaphor of the descent of the typographic mind, beginning, as it does, with reason, and ending, as it does, with entertainment.'

James Mill: ostensibly, referring to James Mill (1773–1836), Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher.

Stephen Vincent Benet (1898–1943), American poet, short story writer, and novelist.

Natty Bumppo: referring to Nathaniel 'Natty' Bumppo, the protagonist of the novels by James Fenimore Cooper.