The reason why the best books are more than simply stories

The reason why the best books are more than simply stories

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Books, and the amount of people who might read them, have actually been absolutely important to human advancement over the centuries.

With such a rich history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often easy 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 big percentage 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, which has actually been true throughout all of history as well. The contemporary world is built on understanding that has actually been passed down through books, whether that is philosophy, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.

It is very important to bear in mind that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. A lot of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, merely due to the fact that the vast majority of people could not read, implying that many books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a short boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped significantly during 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 a few of the only members of the population 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 vast bulk of individuals might not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the creation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books a lot 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 happened 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 understanding.