Burning the Books
A History of Knowledge Under Attack
by Richard Ovenden
- Publication
- First published 2020
- ISBN
- 9781529378757, 9780674271104, 9781529378764
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Sign inThe 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.
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