BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge

    (By Richard Ovenden)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 26 MB (26,085 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 654 times
    Last checked 13 Hour ago!
    Author Richard Ovenden
    “Book Descriptions: 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 In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself.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.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    The Library: A Fragile History

    ★★★★★

    Andrew Pettegree

    Book 1

    The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance

    ★★★★★

    Anders Rydell

    Book 1

    France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain

    ★★★★★

    Julian T. Jackson

    Book 1

    The Bookseller's Tale

    ★★★★★

    Martin Latham

    Book 1

    Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers

    ★★★★★

    Emma Smith

    Book 1

    How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler

    ★★★★★

    Peter Pomerantsev

    Book 1

    The Weimar Years Rise and Fall 1918-1933

    ★★★★★

    Frank McDonough

    Book 1

    All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

    ★★★★★

    George Orwell

    Book 1

    WolfWalkers: The Graphic Novel (Cartoon Saloon’s Irish Folklore)

    ★★★★★

    Tomm Moore

    Book 1

    The Invisible College

    ★★★★★

    Jeff Wheeler

    Book 1

    Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

    ★★★★★

    Christopher Clark

    Book 1

    Historia de la noche

    ★★★★★

    Jorge Luis Borges

    Book 1

    Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire

    ★★★★★

    Eric Berkowitz

    Book 1

    Europe: A Natural History

    ★★★★★

    Tim Flannery

    Book 1

    Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany

    ★★★★★

    James Wyllie

    Book 1

    Leyendas de Guatemala

    ★★★★★

    Miguel Ángel Asturias

    Book 1

    The Celtic Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends

    ★★★★★

    Miranda Aldhouse-Green

    Book 1

    Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History

    ★★★★★

    Alex von Tunzelmann