FYI this was written by Chris Hedges, the same guy who wrote the book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. I only mention it because it's a really good book.

That said, his literacy statistics come from Gatto's analysis for the 1993 NALS, even though there was a new one released just a couple years ago. And also, his other literacy stats come from here:

http://bookstatistics.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cf...

While these numbers are probably roughly correct, and I have cited them myself in the past, they really do need to be verified.