"Now we are a city" : portrait of a boomtown -- "A magnificent array of books" : the origins and development of the Muncie Public Library -- Cosmopolitan trends : print culture and the public library in 1890s Muncie -- Borrowing patterns : the Muncie Public Library and its patrons -- "Bread sweet as honey" : reading, education, and the public library -- Reading and reform : the role of fiction in the civic imagination of Muncie's activist women -- Schoolboys and social butterflies : profiling Middletown readers -- Epilogue. Looking backward, looking forward -- Appendix. The What Middletown read database