Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

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Our ability to access and read books has actually been definitely vital to our ability to comprehend the world around us.

It can be tough to picture what the world would be like today if the huge majority of people were unable to read, but for the large bulk of history the large majority of individuals 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 changed that, making books much more available. Of course, it was still just truly the richest and well-read that could read or write, but it made it possible for a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are fortunate to be able to simply log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily gain access to the totality of human knowledge.

With such an abundant history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases simple to forget how extremely 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 huge percentage of all the books that have ever been composed (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the way that you take a look at the world, and that has actually been true throughout all of history too. The modern world is built on knowledge 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.

It is necessary to keep in mind that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity'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 because the large bulk of people could not read, suggesting that many books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a short boom throughout the classical era of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped significantly throughout the Middle Ages. Books ended up being rare treasures, with monks meticulously copying out the enduring classic texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were a few of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of understanding like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern-day world.