Literacy and popular culture Book

Having lived the decade Marwick writes about with some consciousness of what was happening, I found this portrayal extraordinarily dull, rather like a great list or chronology written by someone alien to the topic. Since the author is only fifteen years older than me, this is rather inexcusable. Hypothetical causes of his failure to write an insightful book range from the charitable assumption that he was trying overhard to be objective to the suspicion that he found much of the period distasteful. Such little virtue this dry-as-dust book represents, for this American reader at least, is in its coverage of European events, particularly those in Italy, of which I'd been unaware.