Twenty First Annual Report 1936

A history of audiobooks, from entertainment & rehabilitation for blinded World War I soldiers to a twenty-first-century competitive industry. Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account are nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison’s recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877, to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans, to today’s billion-dollar audiobook industry. The Untold Story of the Talking Book focuses on the social impact of audiobooks, not just the technological history, in telling a story of surprising and impassioned conflicts: from controversies over which books the Library of Congress selected to become talking books—yes to Kipling, no to Flaubert—to debates about what defines a reader. Delving into the vexed relationship between spoken and printed texts, Rubery argues that storytelling can be just as engaging with the ears as with the eyes, and that audiobooks deserve to be taken seriously. They are not mere derivatives of printed books but their own form of entertainment. We have come a long way from the era of sound recorded on wax cylinders, when people imagined one day hearing entire novels on mini-phonographs tucked inside their hats. Rubery tells the untold story of this incredible evolution and, in doing so, breaks from convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctively modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read. Praise for The Untold Story of the Talking Book “If audiobooks are relatively new to your world, you might wonder where they came from and where they’re going. And for general fans of the intersection of culture and technology, The Untold Story of the Talking Book is a fascinating read.” —Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times “[Rubery] explores 150 years of the audio format with an imminently accessible style, touching upon a wide range of interconnected topics . . . Through careful investigation of the co-development of formats within the publishing industry, Rubery shines a light on overlooked pioneers of audio . . . Rubery’s work succeeds in providing evidence to ‘move beyond the reductive debate’ on whether audiobooks really count as reading, and establishes the format’s rightful place in the literary family.” —Mary Burkey, Booklist (starred review)

By supplying small entrepreneurs with necessary capital to start and expand their businesses, Jewish loan societies facilitated the rise up the economic ladder of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jews. These collective institutions were an important feature of a cohesive ethnic economy in which Jewish factory owners hired Jewish workers, Jewish retailers bought goods from Jewish wholesalers, and Jewish shopkeepers relied on Jewish loan associations for funding. A Credit to Their Community is a sociohistorical study of Jewish credit organizations from the 1880s until the end of World War II. Upon their arrival in the United States during this critical period in American Jewish life, Eastern European Jewish immigrants established hundreds of loan societies in communities as diverse as Nashville, Tennessee; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Rock Island, Illinois; and Portland, Oregon. While there is ample discussion and documentation of the over-representation of Jewish immigrants in business, until now the question of how these immigrant entrepreneurs raised the necessary funds to start their enterprises has not been addressed. Based on primary historical documents, this book analyzes the emergence, growth, and subsequent decline of three types of Jewish loan associations in America: Hebrew free loan societies; remedial loan associations—philanthropic loan societies that charged relatively low interest fees; and credit cooperatives. The author addresses a number of issues related to the functioning of the Jewish credit organizations, including the activities of women's loan associations, debates about whether or not to open doors to non-Jewish borrowers, discussions about the merits and faults of implementing interest charges, the effects of the Great Depression on loan organizations, and the relations between free loan Societies and other Jewish organizations. While the primary focus is on Jews, the text also offers comparisons between Jewish loan societies and those of other enterprising groups such as the Japanese and Chinese. This study raises an important theoretical question in the field of ethnicity; namely, to what extent are ethnic institutions influenced by culture—cultural traits brought from countries of origin—and to what extent do they emerge as responses to the new context to which immigrants have arrived? In answering this question, Dr. Tenenbaum highlights the importance of both cultural and contextual factors for the emergence of Jewish loan associations.