Bestselling authors Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst explore why independent reading is vital to the intellectual and developmental growth of students as citizens of our world and as architects of the future. Forged by Reading explores historic and timely topics through the context of literacy--literacy being the gateway to power and privilege--while serving as nothing short of a call to action. One that reminds educators of their critical hand in empowering readers to think, to seek curiosity and skepticism, to shape themselves and their ideas through evidence and reason, vision and imagination, and in doing so to forge themselves and our world through reading.