- Summary
- "The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction--and surprising survival--of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the United Kingdom's Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts--political, religious, and cultural--and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions."-- Provided by publisher.
- Series
- Business book summary
Business book summary.
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Ovenden, Richard, author.
- Published
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020
©2020
- Edition
- First Harvard University Press edition
- Contents
-
Cracked clay under the mounds
A pyre of papyrus
When books were dog cheap
An ark to save learning
Spoil of the conqueror
How to disobey Kafka
The twice-burned library
The paper brigade
To be burned unread
Sarajevo Mon Amour
Flames of empire
An obsession with archives
The digital deluge
Paradise lost?
Coda: Why we will always need libraries and archives.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Belknap Press, publisher.
- Notes
-
"First published in Great Britain as Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack in 2020 by John Murray (Publishers) A Hachette UK company"--Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-290) and index.
Cracked clay under the mounds -- A pyre of papyrus -- When books were dog cheap -- An ark to save learning -- Spoil of the conqueror -- How to disobey Kafka -- The twice-burned library -- The paper brigade -- To be burned unread -- Sarajevo Mon Amour -- Flames of empire -- An obsession with archives -- The digital deluge -- Paradise lost? -- Coda: Why we will always need libraries and archives.
