Burning the Books - A History of Knowledge Under Attack

by Richard Ovenden

I ordered this book after hearing a talk about it by its author Richard Ovenden, who is the librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This is a fascinating book about the importance of libraries and archives in preserving a record of our past for the future. It examines in depth a number of instances of the deliberate destruction of books and archives throughout history and in different cultures, which as the author points out, is almost always a political act related to identity. It starts with the well known example of the Library of Alexandria, and ends with the Internet, going through other instances such as the library in Sarajevo, which burned for three days and was never reported in western news. It also chronicles writers who have decided to destroy their own archives as a way to write their own histories and determine their own reputations for posterity. It ends with important questions about the influence of the Internet and who now decides what gets recorded, how, and at what price? Paradoxically, with so much information available, much of it may be lost to us and future generations. The book is a thought-provoking read for everyone interested in the preservation and transmission of our artefacts. I couldn’t help but draw the parallels with the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage that we have witnessed in recent years .