Why the best books are greater than just stories

Why the best books are greater than just stories

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The world today is built upon a nearly incomprehensible quantity of understanding that has actually been passed down in books.

It is very important to bear in mind that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Most stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, simply because the vast majority of people could not read, meaning that many books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a short boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped drastically throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks meticulously copying out the surviving traditional texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and faith that all of us have access to in the modern-day world.

It can be tough to picture what the world would resemble today if the large majority of people were unable to read, but for the huge bulk of history the large majority of people could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the development of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books far more available. Obviously, it was still only really the wealthiest and well-read that could read or write, however it allowed a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have occurred if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to just log onto a website like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and quickly gain access to the totality of human knowledge.

With such a rich history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how incredibly fortunate we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a big proportion of all the books that have actually ever been composed (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can easily alter the way that you look at the world, which has been true throughout all of history too. The contemporary world is built upon understanding that has actually been passed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had actually not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.