Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contenidos: Preface

Introduction — Christine Pawley

Part 1: Methods and Evidence

Community Places and Reading Spaces: Main Street Public Library in the Rural Heartland, 1876–1956 — Wayne A. Wiegand

Reading Library Records: Constructing and Using the What Middletown Read Database — Frank Felsenstein, John Straw, Katharine Leigh, and James J. Connolly

"Story Develops Badly, Could Not Finish": Member Book Reviews at the Boston Athenæum in the 1920s — Ross Harvey

"A Search for Better Ways into the Future": The Library of Congress and Its Users in the Interwar Period — Jane Aikin

Part 2: Public Libraries, Readers, and Localities

Going to “America”: Italian Neighborhoods and the Newark Free Public Library, 1900–1920 — Ellen M. Pozzi

"A Liberal and Dignified Approach": The John Toman Branch of the Chicago Public Library and the Making of Americans, 1927–1940 — Joyce M. Latham

Counter Culture: The World as Viewed from Inside the Indianapolis Public Library, 1944–1956 — Jean Preer

Part 3: Intellectual Freedom

Censorship in the Heartland: Eastern Iowa Libraries during World War I — Julia Skinner

Locating the Library in the Nonlibrary Censorship of the 1950s: Ideological Negotiations in the Professional Record — Joan Bessman Taylor

“Is Your Public Library Family Friendly?”: Libraries as a Site of Conservative Activism, 1992–2002 — Loretta M. Gaffney

The Challengers of West Bend: The Library as a Community Institution — Emily Knox

Part 4: Librarians and the Alternative Press

Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press by and for Activist Librarians — Alycia Sellie

From the Underground to the Stacks and Beyond: Girl Zines, Zine Librarians, and the Importance of Itineraries through Print Culture — Janice A. Radway

Contributors

Index

Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth‑Century America is an edited collection that explores how public libraries in the United States have served as dynamic community spaces for reading, access to print culture, and public life throughout the 20th century. It emphasizes the user experience — what actual readers did in libraries, how they interacted with collections, how libraries responded (or didn’t) to societal changes, and how issues like immigration, censorship, and alternative print cultures shaped library services.