Waxler, Robert P. The Risk of Reading

I specifically requested to review this book out of personal interest in works that offer ethical bases for dedication to literature. This interest was reinforced after learning a few biographical things about the author. Robert P. Waxler is an English professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and, most importantly, he is co-founder of the Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) program. CLTL is “essentially a reading group that meets over a period of weeks and that is attended by an instructor, probation officer, judge, and students” (CLTL website); it is a bibliotherapy program that offers alternative probation sentences to offenders. Basically, individuals on probation can enroll and, if they show up to class, do their homework, and complete the course, their probation may be reduced. In other (rough) cases, they might run into penalizations. The program was founded on the idea –constantly repeated in The Risk of Reading (RoR) –that literature does affect lives for the good, and it has been proven to save the government tens of thousands of dollars and reduce recidivism. How cool is that?