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.

With such a rich history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes easy to forget how exceptionally 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 substantial percentage of all the books that have ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the manner in which you look at the world, and that has held true throughout all of history too. The modern 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 is necessary to remember that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humanity's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, just due to the fact that the huge bulk of people could not read, implying that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a quick boom throughout the classical period of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped considerably throughout the Middle Ages. Books ended up being uncommon treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of knowledge like biology and religious beliefs that we all have access to in the contemporary world.

It can be difficult to picture what the world would be like today if the large majority of people were not able to read, but for the vast majority of history the huge bulk of individuals might not, and nor were books available 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 richest and well-educated that could read or write, however it made it possible for an entire host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across 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 easily access the totality of human knowledge.