Wow! eBook
The New Dark Ages: The Instant Sunday Times bestseller about the End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society
Author(s): James Marriott (Author)
- Publisher: Vintage
- Publication Date: 27 May 2027
- Language: English
- Print length: 208 pages
- ISBN-10: 1809921007
- ISBN-13: 9781809921000
Book Description
'Without question the most important book of the year' MARINA HYDE
'Superb' TOM HOLLAND
Reading built the modern world. It helped create democracy, science and reason.
Now, books are dying, and people everywhere are losing the ability to read deeply or think rationally.
The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through history is breaking.
The screen has replaced the page. Our free time has been colonised by addictive, infantilising slop. A culture of distraction is replacing a culture of reasoned debate.
As reading declines, thought becomes shallower and culture becomes simpler.
Public life is becoming more emotional, more tribal, more irrational.
We are entering a post-literate society. And the world we knew is already beginning to disappear.
Six hundred years after the invention of the printed book, it has never been more threatened or more irreplaceable.
‘Anyone who wants to understand the world today needs to read this book’ NAOMI ALDERMAN
‘One of the most important cultural crises of all. Essential reading’ANDREW MARR
‘Put down your phone and read this’HELEN LEWIS
Editorial Reviews
Product description
Review
I love James and his bulging brain -- Pandora Sykes
Simply brilliant and very bracing -- India Knight
Fascinating … a usefully cautionary contribution ― Spectator
An excellent book … [James] is a commentator of rare erudition, insight and wit … His bracing argument should be enough to rouse our collective reason from sleep. An outstanding debut ― New European
Tells the story of what happens when a civilisation that over several centuries came to think through the written word begins, unthinkingly, to lose the capacity to read because the rapid ascendancy of screens … At first blush it is a sweeping thesis, but Marriott sustains his paean to print with panache …. Compelling … Refreshing ― The Times
[A] thoughtful and forceful book ― Mail on Sunday
[A] compelling analysis… Marriott’s style is perfectly balanced between passion and objectivity ― Critic
A big thesis [that] articulates something useful about the terrible age of flux in which we find ourselves … Marriott’s book [is] lucid, disarmingly well-written and impassioned ― Irish Times
About the Author
James Marriottis a columnist at The Times. He presented the Radio 4 series How Reading Made Us about the history of literacy and writes the popular Substack newsletter Cultural Capital. Before joining The Times, James worked in the rare book trade.
He was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne and studied English Literature at the University of Oxford.
