The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society

The instant Sunday Times bestseller! Reading built the modern world. It helped create democracy, science and reason. Now, books are dying, and people everywhere are losing the ability to read deeply or think rationally. The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through history is breaking. The screen has replaced the page. Our free time has been colonised by addictive, infantilising slop. A culture of distraction is replacing a culture of reasoned debate. As reading declines, thought becomes shallower and culture becomes simpler. Public life is becoming more emotional, more tribal, more irrational. We are entering a post-literate society. And the world we knew is already beginning to disappear. Six hundred years after the invention of the printed book, it has never been more threatened or more irreplaceable. 'Without question the most important book of the year. This book is a flashing emergency light for our culture.' - Marina Hyde. 'Anyone who wants to understand the world today needs urgently to read this book.' - Naomi Alderman. ‘In this bracing and breezy book, James Marriott explains why the world feels so loud, chaotic and angry - we have lost the reflection and empathy fostered by reading. Put down your phone and read The New Dark Ages.’ - Helen Lewis.