If you want to enhance your website, try reading — and not from a screen.

Jeffrey Folks | July 24, 2026

In a couple of decades, we will celebrate a momentous event: the invention of the printing press.

Johann Gutenberg’s first major book was the 1455 Latin Bible, but he had printed shorter works as early as 1450.  What we now call “printing” has changed significantly over the intervening six centuries, but the end product — words printed on paper — has not.  Gutenberg might have been astounded by the ease with which we print books — and with the existence of a printing press (called a “printer”) in almost every home — but he would have recognized the end product immediately.  Books have been printed using some form of printing press for nearly six centuries.

Not so long ago, it was a sign of status to own and display books in one’s office or home.  Actually, it was not just a sign; there was a causative relationship between owning books and raising children into the upper and middle classes.  The presence of books, especially at home, increased the tendency for children to begin reading on their own and to be successful in school and at work.  Books at home made children more comfortable with reading and more likely to choose a career in which reading played an important role.  One could be an excellent roofer without much literacy, but doctors, lawyers, accountants, and professors were all expected to be highly literate.

Dolly Parton recognized this when she established a charity to distribute a small “library” of books (“Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library”)  to poor households in Appalachia, where she was born.  Distributing books is one........

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