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"The arts of reading are under siege. Despite the claim that with the steady availability of personal digital devices more people are reading more, the content and character of that reading are open to question. In the United States, the matter is a serious one. Eight years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts released the findings of an authoritative survey based on an enormous sample of more than 17,000 adults. Conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and spanning 20 years of polling, it showed that for the first time a majority of Americans no longer had any interest in what, broadly defined, might be called literature. That is to say, 53 percent of Americans claimed, when asked, that in the previous year they had not read a novel, play or poem. This was true for all classes and categories, whatever their age, sex, education, income, region, race or ethnicity."