Author:Matthew Battles
Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved, but shaped, inspired and obliterated knowledge. Matthew Battles takes us on a fascinating journey from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the British Library.
The library has been a battleground of competing notions of what books mean to us, from the clay-tablet collections of ancient Mesopotamia to the legendary libraries of Alexandria, from the burned scrolls of the Qing Dynasty to the book-pyres of the Hitler Youth, from the Dewey Decimal System to the Internet. Battles explores how the library has served two contradictory impulses: to exalt canons of literature, to secure and celebrate the best writing; and the desire to contain all forms of human knowledge - to keep all the books. In its custody of books and the words they contain, the library has confronted and tamed technology, the forces of change and the power of princes time and again.
Fascinating... Eloquently written and genuinely enlightening, Battles's book is a telling testimony to the way libraries can transform lives
—— Sunday HeraldPerforms a valuable service by blowing the dust off our stodgy, conventional conception of the library to reveal the living heart of cultures that beats beneath its stone facade
—— Los Angeles TimesAn erudite, companionable, joyful book... Thrilling
—— SpectatorMatthew Battles touches on almost all the important subjects, through fascinating stories... The book is full of all sorts of treasures
—— Times Literary SupplementAn extraordinary work of scholarship. It not only places the history of Western thought in perspective, but offers new insights concerning the evolution of our thinking and the future of the whole human enterprise
—— John E. Mack, winner of the Pulitzer PrizeThe best intellectual history of the West in one volume I have ever seen. No other such overview provides, in equal compass, as clear and cogent a survey, Its scholarship is impeccable
—— Huston Smith, author of The World's ReligionsThe most thrilling narrative of the West's 3000-year odyssey in pursuit of truth accessible to a broad public... A work of genius
—— Hellenic Journal
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