The Role of Reading in Nine Famous Lives

According to the end-of-millennium Arts and Entertainment Television Network survey, the singular most influential person of the last thousand years was Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. The revolutionary advent of the metal moveable press made possible the diffusion of books to people around the world, profoundly influencing the lives of many historical figures thereafter. This book attempts to demonstrate the prodigious role that reading has played throughout the course of history. It documents the lives of nine individuals who retain legacies of outstanding achievement and whose legacies were molded by the books they read. The subjects presented appear in chronological order according to birth. Respective chapters contain brief biographies of the subjects and discuss the ways in which each subject used books as a principle aid in the development of his exceptional talents. Subjects include Benjamin Franklin, who was in 1724 an active connoisseur in the rapidly growing printing trade, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Pearl S. Buck, Louis L'Amour, and Nelson Mandela.~ The book maintains that while these historical figures represent a wide range of talents and influences, he is attributed with having made invaluable contributions to society, and each was in his time a dedicated reader, inspired to greatness by the power of the written word.