Henry Holt a-spinning in his grave: Literary agenting yesterday and today

The role of the literary agent and the reception granted agents by publishers have changed markedly over the course of the twentieth century. Henry Holt’s views of agents, written in the first decade of the century, help define the status and activities of agents at that time. These are compared with the role of agents today, using archival sources, the book trade literature, and interviews. Thomas L. Bonn, review editor of this journal, is a librarian, Library at State University College at Cortland. He is the author ofUnder Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks andHeavy Traffic and High Culture: The New American Library as Literary Gatekeeper. He is working on a study of American literary agents.     

That vision thing.

The 1991 Janet Doe lecturer describes the vision held by the founders of the Medical Library Association of medical information being readily accessible to health professionals no matter how far they were located from major medical centers, and traces the pursuit of this vision to current outreach activities.     

Education and Conceptions of Democracy: a reply to Bonna Haberman

Against Bonna Haberman, this article asserts that democratic theory contains diverse models of democracy with markedly different values, visions and experiences of the good life. Education in democratic societies is similarly diverse because of the corresponding difference in values between these models, and in almost all of these cases it is strongly content-based. In one model only, that of the critical citizen of moral democracy, is there any ground for neutrality concerning life choices. All other models are strongly partisan in their visions of the good life.