Ironically, this reduction in the inventory of publicly available history books is occurring at a time when Americans are demonstrating their interest in books and in reading. Americans are spending more of their income (per capita) on books than the citizens of any other country in the world. At the same time, books on historic themes regularly appear on best seller lists, as has been the case with such books as Founding Brothers, Undaunted Courage, John Adams and Theodore Rex. For similar reasons, the History Channel has become one of the most successful start-ups in cable television.
For newspapers, magazines and other periodicals, the situation is even worse. Produced in great bulk by publishers in hundreds of communities each day for more than two century, central libraries throughout the country concluded that they could no longer afford to provide the space that bound copies of newspapers and magazines required. One after another, libraries have ceased binding the periodicals, and often, those stored on their shelves have landed in city dumps, recycling bins or with novelty gift companies selling front pages for birthday gifts, suitably framed. What remains of the paper is thrown away.
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