Richard Ovenden - Burning the Books

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NGC300
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Richard Ovenden - Burning the Books

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Richard Ovenden - Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge


| Non-Fiction | History | ePUB | 4.5 Mb |



Richard Ovenden, 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 UK 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 In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself.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 US 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.


Review

“A stark and important warning about the value of knowledge and the dangers that come from the destruction of books. Vital reading for this day and age.” ― Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

“Present-day anxieties confer unwelcome relevance to Richard Ovenden’s Burning the Books…[He] emphasizes that attacks on books, archives and recorded information are the usual practice of authoritarian regimes. Control what people know and you control them; control the past and you control the future…Ovenden argues that libraries should be used to safeguard our digital data, so that the powerful don’t simply delete anything they don’t like or wish to repudiate.” ― Michael Dirda , Washington Post

“Like an epic filmmaker, Richard Ovenden unfolds vivid scenes from three millennia of turbulent history and closes in to mount passionate arguments for the need to preserve the records of the past―and of the present. In the current changing landscape of knowledge and power, this urgent, lucid book calls out to us all to recognize and defend one of our most precious public goods―libraries and archives.” ― Marina Warner, President of the Royal Society of Literature and author of Stranger Magic

“The sound of a warning vibrates through this book…Takes a nightmare that haunts many of us―the notion of the past erased―and confirms that it is no fiction but rather a recurring reality. In the process, Ovenden stays true to his calling, reminding us that libraries and librarians are the keepers of humankind’s memories: without them, we don't know who we are.” ― Jonathan Freedland , The Guardian

“Chronicles how libraries have served as sanctuaries for knowledge under constant threat, and what that means for the present and the future…Shows that when knowledge in print is threatened by power, it’s people pledged to the printed page, rather than armies, who step in…Made clear to me just how vulnerable libraries really are. When we don’t properly fund them, we risk lies becoming the truth, and the truth becoming a joke.” ― Slate

“Vibrant societies build libraries; declining societies close them… It’s no longer necessary to burn a library; the same effect can be achieved through systematic use of the ‘delete’ key… Ovenden argues that only libraries can be trusted to preserve the inconvenient truths that lurk on the internet…A passionate and illuminating account of the obliteration of knowledge that has occurred over the past three millennia…This splendid book reveals how, in today's world of fake news and alternative facts, libraries stand defiant as guardians of truth.” ― Gerard DeGroot , The Times

“When people burn books, they are doing more than attacking words on paper. They are attempting to destroy the record of a people’s past and, through that, their right to be present…It is tempting to think the danger of literature erasure is now behind us because we can store it all digitally. This, Ovenden says, is mistaken. Digital records are fragile…This book should stir us to thinking and to action―against censorship, against careless loss, and for the preservation of the memory of where we came from and of our right to be where we are.” ― Michael Skapinker , Financial Times

“[A] rich and meticulous 3,000 year history of knowledge and all the ways it may be preserved (or not)…Written at a time of huge political and economic strife, attempts to save the concept of the library itself, something it achieves not through polemic…but by telling stories…As Ovenden quietly notes, archives are central to social order, to the ordering of history, and to the expression of national and cultural identity.” ― Rachel Cooke , The Observer

“Shows just how vulnerable archived knowledge is, from the pile of 28,000 clay tablets rescued for the British Museum from Ashurbanipal’s library, destroyed by conquerors of Nineveh in 612 BC, to the deletion of millions of photos from Flickr accounts in 2019.” ― Christopher Howse , The Telegraph

“A wide-ranging and thought-provoking account of efforts to destroy, neglect, or conceal books, archives, private papers, government documents, and other records…Even more troublesome, according to Ovenden, are the vast quantities of information currently held at the whim of a few global tech giants…An engrossing and informative portrait of how important it is to preserve and protect knowledge.” ― Publishers Weekly


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