Book - BookDetective

Name: The Library at Night

Author: Alberto Manguel
Year: 2006
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Books about books, Non Fiction, History, Essays

Purchase/reserch links:

LibraryThing

Goodreads

Amazon

ISBNs:
9780300139143
9780300151305
0300139144

Inspired by creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, the author tours from his childhood bookshelves to the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria and personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others.

He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought--the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral "memory libraries" kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, a library of books never written.