| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Literacy in America: Historic Journey and Contemporary Solutions. By Edward E. Gordon and Elaine H. Gordon. (Westport: Praeger, 2003. xxii, 329 pp. Cloth, $69.95, ISBN 0-275-95524-9. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-275-97864-8.)

The wonder is that this book on literacy in America took Edward E. Gordon and Elaine H. Gordon only ten years to research and write rather than twenty. No one before them has attempted such a full coverage of the history of literacy in the United States from the colonial period to the present day, using quantitative and qualitative evidence. They dismiss the literacy historians' emphasis on the number of the literate, seeking instead to discover how and why people became literate. The primary focus of the book is therefore on literacy instruction at the elementary level. The result is not an unalloyed success, but the Gordons' book is, nonetheless, a major contribution to the history of literacy with appeal well beyond a scholarly audience. Every teacher of literacy would be enriched by reading it.

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