James Marriott

London Times columnist, cultural critic, and author of The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society. He writes the Cultural Capital Substack on society, ideas, and culture, and discussed his case for reading amid screen culture and AI summarization with Russ Roberts on EconTalk.

The Retreat From Reading Weakens the Public Culture of Argument

Journalist James Marriott argues that the decline of long-form reading threatens more than books’ place in daily life: it weakens the habits of sustained argument, critical scrutiny and complex thought that literacy helped establish in public culture. Speaking with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts, Marriott contends that writing makes ideas more stable and contestable than performance-driven media, while Roberts questions whether books alone can provide depth or improve political judgment. Marriott’s narrower conclusion is that reading may persist not as a mass habit but as a deliberate discipline.

Hoover InstitutionSep 21, 202613 min read