Patrick Shannon's Broken Promises was hailed by Language Arts as one of nine seminal references on literacy and inequality in education. But so much has changed, and worsened, since its publication that instead of revising his classic Shannon has written an almost entirely new book. The result, Reading Against Democracy, is Shannon's fully documented, up to date, look at how businesses and political interests broke the promise that American education would teach students how to think, read, and write as citizens.