| Chapter 1 | Blithering Agamemnon: The Borders of Literacy | 3 |
| Literacy and Consciousness | 4 |
| The Wild Boy and Gracie Allen | 10 |
| Agamemnon and the Physical Basis of Literacy | 15 |
| Literacy and Language | 21 |
| Chapter 2 | Chief Cobb vs. Themistocles: The Technologies of Rhetoric, Reading, and Writing | 29 |
| Rhetoric | 30 |
| Reading and Writing | 32 |
| Athens: Writing as a Cultural Force | 40 |
| Sparta and Fear of Writing | 56 |
| Chapter 3 | Word against Empire: Literacy and Power | 61 |
| Rome: Universal Language and World Domination | 62 |
| The Revolutionary Literacy of the Church | 69 |
| Formal and Vernacular Literacy in the Middle Ages | 75 |
| Literacy as Battleground: Then and Now | 83 |
| Chapter 4 | When Media Collide: Literacy and the Advent of Print | 86 |
| Media Use Is Organic | 88 |
| "Get It in Writing!": Medieval Written Culture | 90 |
| The Word, the Press, and the Reformation: John Wycliffe | 98 |
| The Text, the Press, and Orthodoxy: John Donne | 104 |
| The Word and Revolution: John Bunyan | 107 |
| The Miltonic Compromise: Old Made New | 109 |
| Print and Television | 114 |
| Chapter 5 | Iran to Ann Landers: Fallacies about Literacy and Development | 118 |
| Skill in Reading and Writing Does Not a Mighty Nation Make | 119 |
| The Iranian Example | 124 |
| The Psychological Burden of Illiteracy | 129 |
| The Prisoner Phenomenon | 134 |
| Chapter 6 | Hopefully into the Future: John Locke and Correct Usage | 138 |
| Standard Usage and the Rise of Capitalism | 139 |
| The Liberal Fallacy: Truth, Progress, and Literacy | 147 |
| The Cult of Correct Usage | 155 |
| Some Thoughts on Teaching English | 165 |
| Chapter 7 | Caliban in America: Literacy in the Age of Rock | 170 |
| Mechanical Literacy | 171 |
| Followers and Leaders: Two Literacies | 178 |
| Training the Literate Elite | 181 |
| Illiterate Backlash | 187 |
| Orthodox American Literacy | 190 |
| The New Literacy | 200 |
| Chapter 8 | Conclusion | 208 |
| Notes | 215 |
| Bibliography | 221 |
| Index | 237 |
