Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge

Today's nonfiction post is on Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge by Richard Ovenden. It i sIt i s308 pages long and is published by Belpnap Press. The cover is a book being burned through. The intended reader is someone who is interested in the deliberate destruction of books and private papers. There is foul language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- 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 In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself.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.

Review- An interesting history about the destruction of books libraries, personal papers, and other forms of documentation and why. Ovenden covers much of known history of the destruction books and written materials. He discusses why someone might want to do that from protecting the reputation of the writer to destroying a culture's historical memory. Ovenden is an excellent writer, he helps the reader to understand the history and how important the knowledge that been lost is. He does touch on a few times were a person's personal writing was destroyed after their death to protect their public image. How that was seen at the time and how it is seen now, as it gives insight into the person and their work like nothing else. I enjoyed this book very much and I would like to read more from Ovenden.  

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.