Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

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The world today is built on an almost incomprehensible amount of understanding that has been passed down in books.

It is essential to bear in mind that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely since the huge majority of people might not read, implying that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a quick boom during the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped drastically throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were some of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of understanding like biology and faith that we all have access to in the contemporary world.

With such an abundant history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases simple to forget how incredibly lucky 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 huge 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 change the manner in which you take a look at the world, and that has been true throughout all of history also. The modern-day world is built upon knowledge that has been handed 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.

It can be hard to picture what the world would resemble today if the huge bulk of people were not able to read, but for the large bulk of history the huge bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books far more available. Naturally, it was still only really the richest and well-educated that could read or write, but it allowed an entire host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been distributed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are lucky to be able to just log onto a site 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 understanding.