Books On Fire:  The Destruction Of Libraries Throughout History, by Lucien X. Polastron

Among those who love books and libraries  there is an understandable undercurrent of fear about the threats faced to the preservation (much less the increase) of knowledge around the world as is represented by the library.  Whether one reads the melancholy record of the destruction of histories due to war and civil unrest and politically motivated violence, or one is fond of reading dystopian literature, there is a great deal of concern shown towards the vulnerability of libraries and the books they contain.  As someone who frequently reads books about books and their history and storage and preservation, it has become increasingly obvious that a great deal of the fear about the survival of civilization is tied up to concerns about the safety of books and the hostility that many regimes historically and at present have shown towards books.  Indeed, violence towards books and towards learning as a whole has been connected to violence against people, with all of the dangers that entails for unpopular parts of a population whose learning is not valued and whose educational achievements can make them a target for the hostility of powerful forces.

While the chronology of this roughly 300 page book dashes around, it takes a generally chronological and regional look at the destruction of books and libraries throughout history, beginning rather sensibly with the libraries and archives of the ancient near east (1) before moving on to Egypt and its libraries and the horrors inflicted upon the library of Alexandria by repeated disasters, starting with Julius Caesar’s efforts (2).  There are discussions about the immense destruction of ancient books by early Muslims, including all of the earliest Quran manuscripts (3), the ambiguous attitude of Venetians and Jews towards books (4), the massive destruction of texts in China and other places by rulers as well as invaders (5), and the destruction of Jewish and Muslim texts by medieval and early modern Christians in the west (6).  After this tour de force the author spends a great deal of time discussing the horrors of book destruction by French liberals, communists, Nazis, and others in the last 150 years or so (7) as well as a look at the suffering that books and libraries face even in peacetime (8) before closing the book with a discussion of the embarrassment of modernity when it comes to books (9), the desire on a part of many to create flameproof knowledge with digital books (10), and an epilogue that features a return to Alexandria and some of its contemporary problems with books (11).  After this there are three appendices that look at the destruction of the library among great writers (i), a short history of the census of lost books (ii) and a selective chronology of the destruction of libraries (iii).

While admittedly a book like this one can get somewhat monotonous with all of the litany of destruction that libraries have suffered throughout history in war and peace, form natural causes, internal political turmoil and efforts at controlling a population through keeping it ignorant, there are a lot of lessons that one can learn from a book like this.  For one, there appears to be genuinely little agreement that writings as a whole deserve to be protected.  Indeed, there appears to be near universal agreement that the writings of some deserve to be consigned to the flames for one reason or another (and I would not disagree).  The only question is whose writings deserve to be consigned to oblivion and which deserve to be preserved.  And in the absence of a commitment to preserve everything for the future, libraries and book collections will be subject to continued damage as a result of a desire to protect the people from books that are viewed as threatening and harmful to ruling powers even where they are able to be preserved from the normal ravages of time.  The author is right to be somewhat pessimistic about such matters, I believe.