Reading remained an important source of news and entertainment in America during the 1930s. Throughout the decade, more than thirty-nine million people read daily newspapers, even though radio had caused the number of different newspapers to decline. By comparison, there were twenty-nine million radios in American homes at the beginning of the decade and thirty-five million by the end of the decade. For the majority of Americans, reading was the most important source of information and entertainment that they had.

Comic strips and comic books were among the most popular forms of entertainment during the decade. Blondie, a comic strip that started in 1930 as a playful story about young people in the Jazz Age, turned into a funny strip about work and family life in America. Dick Tracy offered readers an opportunity to plunge into the life of a detective battling vicious gangsters, the...