Dallas ranks in the middle of “literate” US cities at No. 36. “The surprise is that Dallas ranks above New York City (No. 47), Los Angeles (No. 54) and Chicago (No. 45). In fact, Dallas is the highest-ranked big city. All of the cities that placed above it have populations well below 1 million, while Dallas has 1,006,877 people. The study’s author says it “does tend to penalize the biggest cities. New York and L.A. have very high numbers of publications, colleges and newspaper readers, but their populations are so big and varied that they offset any literary concentrations those cities might enjoy.”