Accepting the centrality of the history of reading and readers to the history of the book, Robert A. Gross surveys the subject and lays out an agenda for future scholarship in the keynote address for the 1996 Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). His agenda calls for identifying the representations of reading that constitute its ideological history, and for reconstructing the cultural practices, social conventions, and status differences that frame encounters with the written word. Gross critiques current work in the field, including studies of women readers and of African Americans, in a cogent analysis of the power of books to shape personal identity, form community, and determine social standing.