Battles, Matthew,
Library : an unquiet history / Matthew Battles. - x, 253 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-235) and index.
Reading the library -- Burning Alexandria -- The house of wisdom -- The battle of the books -- Books for all -- Knowledge on fire -- Lost in the stacks -- Afterword.
From the clay-tablet collections of ancient Mesopotamia to the storied Alexandria libraries in Egypt, from the burned scrolls of China's Qing Dynasty to the book pyres of the Hitler Youth, from the great medieval library in Baghdad to the priceless volumes destroyed in the multi-cultural Bosnian National Library in Sarajevo, the library has been a battleground of competing notions of what books mean to us. Battles explores how, throughout its many changes, the library has served two contradictory impulses: on the one hand, the urge to exalt canons of literature, to secure and worship the best and most beautiful words; on the other, the desire to contain and control all forms of human knowledge.
9780393351453 0393351459 0393078620 9780393078626 1448180503 9781448180509
2016299442
Libraries--History.
Libraries and society--History.
Books--History.
Libraries--History.
Books.
Libraries.
Libraries and society.
Bibliotek--historia.
History.
Z721 / .B28 2015
027.009
Library : an unquiet history / Matthew Battles. - x, 253 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-235) and index.
Reading the library -- Burning Alexandria -- The house of wisdom -- The battle of the books -- Books for all -- Knowledge on fire -- Lost in the stacks -- Afterword.
From the clay-tablet collections of ancient Mesopotamia to the storied Alexandria libraries in Egypt, from the burned scrolls of China's Qing Dynasty to the book pyres of the Hitler Youth, from the great medieval library in Baghdad to the priceless volumes destroyed in the multi-cultural Bosnian National Library in Sarajevo, the library has been a battleground of competing notions of what books mean to us. Battles explores how, throughout its many changes, the library has served two contradictory impulses: on the one hand, the urge to exalt canons of literature, to secure and worship the best and most beautiful words; on the other, the desire to contain and control all forms of human knowledge.
9780393351453 0393351459 0393078620 9780393078626 1448180503 9781448180509
2016299442
Libraries--History.
Libraries and society--History.
Books--History.
Libraries--History.
Books.
Libraries.
Libraries and society.
Bibliotek--historia.
History.
Z721 / .B28 2015
027.009