Why the best books are greater than just stories

Why the best books are greater than just stories

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Books, and the quantity of people who could read them, have actually been absolutely essential to human advancement over the centuries.

It is very important to bear in mind that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Most stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, simply because the vast majority of people could not read, implying that many books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a brief boom during the classical era of antiquity, the amount of literate individuals dropped significantly during the Middle Ages. Books became rare treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were a few of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the professional keepers of understanding like biology and religious beliefs that all of us have access to in the contemporary world.

It can be difficult to picture what the world would be like today if the vast majority of individuals were unable to read, but for the huge bulk of history the large majority of people could 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 a lot more accessible. Obviously, it was still only really the wealthiest and well-read that could read or write, however it allowed a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread throughout great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed across the globe. 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 gain access to the totality of human understanding.

With such a rich history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often simple to forget how extremely 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 substantial percentage of all the books that have ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can quickly change the manner in which you take a look at the world, and that has held true throughout all of history also. The modern world is built on understanding that has 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 not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.