May 1, 2000
NPR commentator Hamilton, who critically assessed the state of print journalism in Hold the Press: The Inside Story of Newspapers, now takes on the "Literary-Industrial Complex" in this disappointing book. In nine chapters, Hamilton (dean of LSU's school of mass communications) covers a lot of ground at a breakneck pace: he gives a lively rundown of the nation's most stolen books (the Bible, The Joy of Sex and Practice for the Armed Services Test top the list); he peevishly examines the banal rules that govern the contents of "the acknowledgements page"; and he spends a lot of time attacking well-flogged horses such as Amazon.com, Oprah's book club, the Book-of-the-Month Club, the overflow of bestsellers from Stephen King and such mega-corporate publishers as Bertelsmann. (He also criticizes the state of book reviewing--but here he isn't critical enough.) Hamilton is a capable writer, but he relies too often on secondhand statistics, thirdhand anecdotes and heavy attempts at light humor. The last chapter, in which he interviews the staff of the Library of Congress about their battle with the growing information glut and their preservation problems, stands out as a fresh contribution to the debates about books and publishing. Unfortunately, the rest of the time Hamilton can't decide if he wants to provide bibliophiles with a casual collection of interesting tidbits or a critical assessment of the state of the book industry.