This book examines the disappearance of writers who write challenging, intelligent books for a general reading public. Agger traces this decline to a particular organization of literary production and consumption in advanced capitalism. It focusses on the kinds of constraints faced by writers who write either in popular culture (eg journalism, advertising, mass-market fiction, film, television etc) or in the academic world and is framed by a discussion and critique of the prevailing cultural ideoloy of postmodernism. Suggestions of how writers can break through these institutional barriers and instead compose the sort of broad-gauged books that rebuild the public sphere and hence enhance political democracy are discussed.