Alarm about declining interest in books is perpetual, but to some, it seems recently to have reached new heights. It has been less than a year since the Reader’s Digest declared a “reading slump.” A summer Atlantic cover pronounced: “The Age of Reading Is Over.” In America, though, reading is up. Book sales have increased significantly over the past decade, and the number of new independent bookstores has skyrocketed. The global book market is expected to grow five per cent annually for the next several years. For the generation now entering college, book sales are at a lifetime high. James Daunt believes in the future of reading. He likes to think of his work—founding the independent U.K. Daunt Books chain, leading the behemoth Waterstones, and, in 2019, becoming the C.E.O. of Barnes & Noble—as the preservation of a kind of literary and civil space. “The more bookshops there are, the more people will read. The better bookshops are, the more people discover things,” he tells Nathan Heller. Read more about why Daunt remains optimistic: newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…