Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens). The Annotated Huckleberry
Finn: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. With introduction,
notes, and bibliography by Michael P. Hearn. New York: C.N.
Potter and Crown Publishers, 1981.
"Twain drives home just how strongly we are chained to our own literacy through Huck's illiterate silence" (p. 101). "Thus Twain brings into focus the trap of literacy. There is a whole world in Huck Finn that is closed to those without literacy. They can't, for ironic example, read this marvelous work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And yet we must recognize a world rich with superstition and folklore, with adventure and beauty, that remains closed to those who are too tightly chained to letters" (p. 105).
George Gilder. Life After Television: The Coming Transformation of Media and American Life. New York: Norton, 1992.
Neil Postman. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to
Technology. New York: Knopf, 1992.
America-The Epitome of the Civilization of Illiteracy
John Adams. Letters from a Distinguished American: Twelve Essays by John Adams on American Foreign Policy, 1780. Compiled and edited by James H. Hutson. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1978.
-. The Adams-Jefferson: the Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Lester J. Cappon, editor). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. The American Challenge. Trans.
Robert Steel. With a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. New
York: Atheneum, 1968.
Neil Postman. Rising Tide of Illiteracy in the USA, in The
Washington Post, 1985.
"Whatever else may be said of the immigrants who settled in New England in the 17th century, it is a paramount fact that they were dedicated and skillful readers…. It is to be understood that the Bible was the central reading matter in all households, for these people were Protestants who shared Luther's belief that printing was 'God's highest and extremest act of Grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.' But reading for God's sake was not their sole motivation in bringing books into their homes."