Reading wide awake

"Patrick Shannon examines reading as agency--why reading critically is essential to civic engagement and a healthy democracy. We follow the author as he practices 'wide-awake reading' with a variety of everyday texts from radio programs to legal documents to more traditional books and magazines. Shannon demonstrates how we can and must engage in close reading of the world around us and how teachers, in turn, can help their students make meaning from the information in their lives that often appears to move at warp speed." --From back of book.