Who Reads in America?

SAN FRANCISCO--Two years ago, while sitting in a café in Brooklyn on a cold winter night, I ran into "Chicago Mike." In the crook of his arm he held a thick and tattered book. I asked him what he was reading and he told me it was the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon. I asked him if it was the abridged edition.

"No, it's one volume of the un-abridged text. Who needs to read the edited version?"

After ordering a cup of coffee, and with a smile on his face, he got on his bike and rode off into the snow. Mike delivered weed for a living.

The other day I read in a local paper that the department of education had released a report describing the eroding literacy skills of college students in America. One wonders if this is a bellwether for the country as a whole. What does it mean when high-achieving college students are reading less proficiently than their counterparts a generation ago? Are we slowly becoming a nation of non-readers?

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