Library
an unquiet history
by Matthew Battles
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"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."--Jacket.
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Library: An Unquiet History
2011, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
in English
0393078620 9780393078626
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Library: An Unquiet History
November 2, 2004, Thorndike Press
Hardcover
in English
- 1 edition
0786268506 9780786268504
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Library: An Unquiet History
December 2003, Books On Tape
Audio CD
in English
0736698353 9780736698351
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Library: An Unquiet History
December 2003, Books on Tape
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in English
0736696725 9780736696722
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Work Description
On the survival and destruction of knowledge, from Alexandria to the Internet. Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge.Matthew Battles, a rare books librarian and a gifted narrator, takes us on a spirited foray from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the british Library, from socialist reading rooms and rural home libraries to the Information Age. He explores how libraries are built and how they are destroyed, from the decay of the great Alexandrian library to scroll burnings in ancient China to the destruction of Aztec books by the Spanish--and in our own time, the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia. Encyclopedic in its breadth and novelistic in its telling, this volume will occupy a treasured place on the bookshelf next to Baker's Double Fold, Bashanes's A Gentle Madness, Manguel's A History of Reading, and Winchester's The Professor and the Madman.
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- Created April 1, 2008
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| October 19, 2025 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| August 29, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| March 8, 2023 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| January 17, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
| April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |