Day: December 12, 2025

In American high schools, the age of the book may be fading.

Many teenagers are assigned few full books to read from beginning to end — often just one or two per year, according to researchers and thousands of responses to an informal reader survey by The New York Times.

Twelfth-grade reading scores are at historic lows, and college professors, even at elite schools, are increasingly reporting difficulties in getting students to engage with lengthy or complex texts.