StephenKMackSD's Blog

1. A Universal History of the Destruction of Books
2. by Fernando Baez
3. 

4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

“In general, biblioclasts are well-educated people . . . members of the middle or upper classes . . . with religious and social hypersensitivity,” observes Fernando Báez in this learned and humane study. Reading it, one can but mourn the loss of great masterpieces – Zeno of Citium’s Republic, for instance, which was more widely read than Plato’s. The spirit of Borges hovers over this brisk history of biblioclasty, which includes the burning of the famous library of Alexandria in 48BC, the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang’s destruction of books in 213BC, Mongol attacks on Baghdad’s libraries in 1258, Savonarola’s bonfires in Florence in 1497, the destruction of Mayan writings in Mexico in 1562, the Nazi “bibliocaust” of 1933, the destruction of the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, and the libraries burned in Iraq in 2003. The recent case of the Florida pastor who threatened to burn the Qur’an suggests biblioclasty is here to stay. Perhaps ebooks are the answer, for there is little to be gained from putting kindling under a Kindle.

Stanley Fish on education, law and society. Continue reading →