A major goal of the Program was the publication of a five-volume, collaborative scholarly work, A History of the Book in America, which examined American printing and publishing in its full cultural, social, commercial, and political contexts, from the early seventeenth century to our own times. An Editorial Board of distinguished scholars, chaired by David D. Hall, oversaw the series, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press. Many essays from the five volumes have since become canonical treatments of their subjects and are widely cited.
Volume 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, was published in 2000, and reissued in April 2007.
Volume 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840, edited by Mary Kelley and Robert A. Gross, was published in July 2010.
Volume 3, The Industrial Book, 1840-1880, edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, was published in August 2007.
Volume 4, Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940, edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, was published in January 2009.
Volume 5, The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America, edited by Joan Shelley Rubin, David Paul Nord and Michael Schudson, was published in September 2009.
In 2010, the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book held a symposium that celebrated the completion of A History of the Book in America, with presentations by general editor David D. Hall and volume editors Mary Kelley, Scott Casper, and Joan Rubin. The program is archived on the Library of Congress YouTube page: https://youtu.be/1wSSG161adM
Substantial funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities provided major support for the editorial work that inaugurated this important project.