"The Reading Class."

The Chronicle of Higher Education says: You Can't Teach Students To Love Reading.:

In 2005, Wendy Griswold, Terry McDonnell, and Nathan Wright, sociologists from Northwestern University, published a paper concluding that while there was a period in which extraordinarily many Americans practiced long-form reading, whether they liked it or not, that period was indeed extraordinary and not sustainable in the long run. "We are now seeing such reading return to its former social base: a self-perpetuating minority that we shall call the reading class."

The argument here appears to be a handwringing one: that between 1945 and 2000, more Americans and Europeans read long-form novels and non-fiction than at any time in history because there was an explosion of publishing and because there was nothing else to do.

Oh, really? No television, no baseball games, no parks, no swimming pools, no theaters? I have my doubts.