Library : an unquiet history / Matthew Battles.
Publisher: New York ; London : W.W. Norton & Company, [2003]Copyright date: ©2003Edition: First editionDescription: x, 245 pages : illustrations ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0393020290
- 9780393020298
- 9780393325645
- 0393325644
- 027/.009 21
- Z721 .B28 2003
- 06.31
Paperback published in 2004.
Includes bibliographical references 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.
"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."--BOOK JACKET.
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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SMSA Library Non-fiction | 027 BAT | Available | 36483 |
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