In 2025, most Americans read fewer than four books.

More distressing is the larger cultural shift away from reading for pleasure. According to a National Library of Medicine study, reading has been slowly falling out of fashion since the dawn of the millennium. Kids aren’t reading as much, or getting read to. Men at large may be shifting genre focus, and spending more time with magazines.

We should be reading more. Not an American, but we would see similar trends for the whole world.