Understand How Reading Made Us: 3. How Reading Made Our Politics
Mar 30, 2026
Steven Pinker, psychologist and author, links education and literacy to democratic growth. Robert Darnton, historian of books, traces pamphlets, public readings and print’s role in 18th-century politics. Jung Chang, bestselling writer, shares firsthand accounts of censorship and clandestine reading under Mao. They discuss literacy’s political power, book bans and how changing reading habits might reshape public life.
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Family Library Destroyed During Cultural Revolution
- Jung Chang described her father’s library being seized and burned during the Cultural Revolution.
- She watched her father hurl books into a sink bonfire while crying, an experience that led to his mental breakdown and showed censorship’s human toll.
Literacy Spread Tied To Democracy And Now It's Declining
- James Marriott links the spread of literacy to democratic development and warns of reading's decline.
- He cites surveys showing 40% of British adults hadn't read a book in a year and falling newspaper reach as threats to informed politics.
Public Readings Created A New Political Front
- Robert Darnton argues reading added a new political dimension by enabling a 'war of words' alongside oral and visual media.
- Public readings and pamphlets became theatrical participatory events that shaped public opinion and fed revolutionary temper.
