Ronald J. Zboray is Associate Professor of Communication and of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Among his books are A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public (Oxford). Mary Saracino Zboray is an independent scholar; she is coauthor, with Ron Zboray, of A Handbook for the Study of Book History in the United States (Library of Congress).
'Overall, this is a significant, highly readable, and exhaustively researched study of a particularly dynamic period in the history of American authorship.' – The Journal of American History