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The New Dark Ages

The Instant Sunday Times bestseller about the End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society

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The New Dark Ages

By: James Marriott
Narrated by: James Marriott
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Summary

Reading built the modern world. It helped create democracy, science and reason.

Now, books are dying, and people everywhere are losing the ability to read deeply or think rationally.

The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through history is breaking.

The screen has replaced the page. Our free time has been colonised by addictive, infantilising slop. A culture of distraction is replacing a culture of reasoned debate.

As reading declines, thought becomes shallower and culture becomes simpler.

Public life is becoming more emotional, more tribal, more irrational.

We are entering a post-literate society. And the world we knew is already beginning to disappear.

Six hundred years after the invention of the printed book, it has never been more threatened or more irreplaceable.

'Without question the most important book of the year' MARINA HYDE

'Superb' TOM HOLLAND

‘Anyone who wants to understand the world today needs to read this book’ NAOMI ALDERMAN

‘One of the most important cultural crises of all. Essential reading’ ANDREW MARR

‘Put down your phone and read this’ HELEN LEWIS

© James Marriott 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Media Studies Politics & Government Social Sciences Words, Language & Grammar Socialism
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Critic reviews

Without any question the most important book of the year. This book is a flashing emergency light for our culture. I genuinely could not love James Marriott's writing and thinking more. Let me sign up to his literacy army right now - I would follow him anywhere (Marina Hyde)
Superb. The best way to make the case for good books is to write one - and in this learned and highly entertaining jeremiad, that is precisely what James Marriott has done (Tom Holland)
Anyone who wants to understand the world today needs urgently to read this book (Naomi Alderman)
If our addiction to smartphones is sapping our ability to concentrate long enough to read a book, James Marriott’s clear, engaging and original prose may yet seduce us back to it, or at least slow our retreat from the page (Philippa Perry)
In this bracing and breezy book, James Marriott explains why the world feels so loud, chaotic and angry - we have lost the reflection and empathy fostered by reading. Put down your phone and read The New Dark Ages (Helen Lewis)
In this worthy heir to Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, Marriott makes an urgent and compelling case that the death of reading is accelerating and the consequences might prove worse than we feared (Cal Newport)
Pungent, learned and bang up-to-date… A spirited polemic on one of the most important cultural crises of all. Essential reading (Andrew Marr)
The New Dark Ages…[is] an essential conversation-start about the imperilled future of reading
A heartfelt polemic ... Both a lament and celebration
I love James and his bulging brain ... James Marriott is a man who blends mass appeal and esotericism to beguiling effect … The New Dark Ages is a short sharp shock of a book – necessarily weighty but written with pith and wit … I folded down 39 pages of this 167-page book and could have easily folded down more (Pandora Sykes)
All stars
Most relevant
I’d had this book on preorder for a long time - it’s finally here and I’m not disappointed.
The possibility that the democratising and liberating qualities of mass literacy may be a passing phase in human evolution could be the most important question for our human species.
Please let’s give it the attention it deserves. 🙏

If we are the last generation of humans whose minds are enriched by reading long-form text, that doesn’t necessarily mean future generations will be less thoughtful, wise or capable of empathy and sociability.
But I agree that it is difficult to see what will be the alternative sources of wisdom that can prevent us from fighting and drowning in what Nicholas Carr in 2010 called “the shallows”.

Personally I’m hopeful that building new protocols of learning and communicative excellence through better recognition of the interdependence of oracy and literacy may help us by-pass The New Dark Ages. But it is more of a prayer than a prophecy.

An exquisitely expressed “call to arms” to protect our species.

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I listened to an audiobook that is about actual reading. This book is meant to be read on paper and felt in one’s hand. That must be fessed up before any of my comments are considered.

James Marriott is a great columnist who I read each Monday/Tuesday in The Times. My appreciation of his writing and thinking makes me biased. That said, I found this book clear thinking and compellingly persuasive.

It is a short book and in my view constitutes an essay on steroids.

Have bought the physical book as a reference text for me to dip into and maybe allow others in the house to pick up and digest.

The material is kinda dense so be aware. It’s not that light a read. One for short rewarding visits.

The irony is not lost on me

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