Faculty Member Authors Book on American Book-Publishing History

Published 05.29.2012

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“How Books Came to America: The Rise of the American Book Trade,” by John Hruschka, assistant professor of English-composition in the School of Integrated Studies at Pennsylvania College of Technology, was published recently by the Penn State University Press.



John HruschkaThe book examines the ways books are manufactured and sold while telling the story of the people who influenced the development of the modern book business in the United States.

In the book, Hruschka traces the commercial development of the American book trade from the moment of European contact with the Americas to the development of digital text. His work focuses upon the technological, historical, cultural, political and personal forces that shaped the American book trade during the 18th and 19th centuries, including the influence of German bookseller and Publishers Weekly founder Frederick Leypoldt, as well as Benjamin Franklin, the Harpers, Melvil Dewey and others.

As the publishing arm of The Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, Penn State University Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge – new information, interpretations, methods of analysis – with an emphasis on core fields of the humanities and social sciences. Hruschka’s book is part of the Penn State Series in the History of the Book.

Hruschka joined the faculty at Penn College in 2009. He holds a doctorate in English from Penn State and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in English from Illinois State University.

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