Books

This board holds the pictures gathered for Books, one of the books in James Lantos's Pictorial America series of illustrated histories. It is a book about books, and about the people who read, printed, sold and collected them.

Reading has deep roots in American life. Many colonists learned to read so they could read the Bible, and printing presses were among the first tools of trade set up in the colonies. Benjamin Franklin began as a printer, and he helped found one of the first subscription libraries in America in Philadelphia in 1731, so members could pool their money and share books.

The Library of Congress has its own book story. It was founded in 1800, and its collection was burned when British troops set fire to the Capitol in 1814. Thomas Jefferson sold Congress his personal library the next year to replace it, more than 6,000 volumes. That purchase became the foundation of the national library.

In the late 1800s cheaper paper and faster presses made books affordable for almost everyone. Dime novels sold by the millions. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate, paid for the construction of more than 1,600 public library buildings in the United States, and many towns still use them. Publishers began advertising new books and magazines with art posters, and the best of those from the 1890s are now collected as artworks.

The pictures here show readers of every kind: children with schoolbooks, families reading by lamplight, students in library reading rooms and people browsing at bookstalls. There are pictures of printing presses and bookbinders at work, grand library buildings and small-town libraries. Look at how often artists and photographers chose a reader as their subject, in parlors, parks and classrooms alike. A person absorbed in a book was a favorite image of quiet and concentration, and it still is.