Subway Readers

Lots of people read on the subway, but styles differ. Washingtonians read computer printouts: bureaucratic directives, or foundation position papers. New Yorkers are more eclectic: they read for information or knowledge or epiphany. On a number one train going north from Times Square last night, I could identify: A guy immersed in the New York Times reporters' account of his life as a prisoner of the Taliban; a woman paging through The New Yorker; another woman, this one perusing a hardcover novel; a guy with a Penguin paperback, but also with earbuds, so it is anybody's guess what was the primary focus of his attention. But the most interesting was a young woman in white pullover and Levis with a red ponytail and Coke-bottle glasses. She was immersed in a paperback copy of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, specifically Chapter XXXII. That is:

The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of premature and perpetual decay.

Suppose she know something we don't know?