The Open Door: When Writers First Learned to Read

"Slowly my eyes rode across the lines of print, and the New World smiled. . . The door opened, and without hesitation I walked through."

- M. F. K. Fisher



Twenty-nine of history and literature's most interesting & celebrated writers recall their discovery of books and reading: Benjamin Franklin, William Cobbet, Charles Dickens, Fredrick Douglas, Abraham Cahan, Rudyard Kipling, W.B. Yeats, H.G. Wells, Gertrude Stein, Winston Churchill, Sherwood Anderson, Upton Sinclair, H.L. Mencken, A.A. Milne, Will Durant, E.E. Cummings, Jean Rhys, C.S. Lewis, John Steinbeck, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Richard Wright, M.F.K. Fisher, Eudora Welty, Dylan Thomas, Harper Lee, Paule Marshall, Richard Rodriguez, Stephen King, Annie Dillard.