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Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History

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When I first took this book out of its mailing container I thought: "Gee, it's damaged. How could that have happened in a cardboard box?" Then I looked more closely & realized that the jacket of the book was cleverly designed to give the appearance of its having been burned. So that right off can't help but stir a potential reader's interest.

BOOKS ON FIRE is a historical examination of book burning & the destruction of famous(and not so famous) libraries. The work is penned by a skilled writer who knows that the best way to convey history is by letting the reader in on behind the scenes descriptions, gossip & scandal. For example, the opening chapter deals with the fabled Library of Alexandria under the imported Ptolemy dynasty (that concluded with the death of Cleopatra.) I have been studying this historic period for some time now, but Lucien X. Polastron sprinkles this section of his work with wonderful little tidbits that were new to me, and that also shed new light on this fascinating moment in time.

Regarding The Library of Alexandria, author Lucien X. Polastron quotes Hugh Lloyd-Jones: "If this Library had survived, the dark ages, despite the preponderance of Christianity, could have been considerably lighter."

Polastron opens each chapter with a short, pithy and/or poetic quotes from diverse sources. For example, the author opens Chapter 3 with this quote from Alexander Pope commenting on public book burning "Heavens, what a pile! Whole ages perish there, And one bright blaze turns learning into air."

BOOKS ON FIRE was originally written in French, and is well served by Jon E. Graham's impeccable & colloquial perfect English translation.

Polastron's writing style is poetic, contemporary, engaging, often humorous (sometimes slyly so) & extraordinarily insightful: "So just what are libraries, then? For the nation they are indecipherable dead weight, for the bureaucrats an empoisoned directive; but above all, they are the symbol of tyranny in the eyes of the restless..."

The contents cover the full gamut of book burning & library wrecking in human history, from the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the Early Christian era, the early days of Islam, the Inquisition in Europe & the Americas, to Hitler & Stalin, up to and including our own time. In bewteen the major historical periods Polastron includes lesser known, but equally enlightening & devastating examples of violent censorship of The Collective Word. No transgressor is spared the damning spotlight revealed by the author: Left, Right & every bigoted position in bewteen. It is shocking to become aware of the thousands, probably tens of thousands of violent attempts to surpress human thought there have been throughtout our torturous history.

The section Early Islam provided a wealth of information that really helped me personally understand the historic significance of this religion. I've read a number of academic books on this complex subject, but none of them were constructed in such a way that appeals to both popular & intellctual curiosity. Again, Polastron exhibits that rare gift to draw the reader or student into a sense of intimacy and...yes, "fun."

Perhaps smiling to mask the tears would be a more apt describtion.

The effect on the European invasions on the indigenious of the "New World" is well known, but the destruction of their literature & high level of learning is not so well known because Christianity made sure to wipe out virtually every trace of it.

One can't help but to recall those famous words of Heinrich Heine: "Where they burn books, they will in the end burn human beings as well." [He made this statement refering to the burning of The Koran during the Spanish Inquisition.

Regarding the Iraq War & US Occupation Polastron aptly remarks: "The quiet list servers of the Internet...suddenly exploded with invectives and revealed how intolerance could hide precisely where it was least expected. A good number of the American subscribers displayed open hostility to any mention of Iraq and slammed shut their portals...the United States and Great Britain never ratified ratified the 1954 Hague Convention decree on the protection of cultural items in the lands to which they, as nations, might bring misfortune, the leaders of these two countries had only their consciences for their guide. As for the soldiers..."

In this chronicle the reader not only discovers the events behind the destruction, but also the history of buildings & books destroyed.

I highly recommend Books on Fire to the historian, the literary enthusiast & to all champions of free thought.

BOOKS ON FIRE is a sheer pleasure to peruse.

Historian Lucien X. Polastron presents Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History, a chronicle of the destruction of libraries. The reasons for expunging repositories of human knowledge were varied: educated people are more difficult to govern; some claimed that only the illiterate can save the world; sometimes library's owner succumbed to paranoia; and sometimes destruction came through weather or worms rather than human agencies. From the burning of the great library of Alexandria on three separate occasions, to the biblio-destruction inflicted under Nazi occupation and library ransacking during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Books on Fire explores the literary tragedies of history, and follows up with a new possible threat to the physical paper book - the digital book. With books increasingly being transferred to electronic mediums and read online for free, could old-fashioned libraries one day become a thing of the past? A "must-have" history for public libraries and the shelf of any book lover.

The book's jacket draws us in with the observation that, "almost as old as the idea of the library is the urge to destroy it." One should not be fooled by this statement into thinking that the purposeful destruction of libraries will be the author's primary thesis. Indeed, purposeful, malicious, destruction is but a small subset of the author's work. The majority of his effort is devoted to recounting for us the loss, and manner of loss, of, what seems at times, to be every book in history, regardless if this book was lost because of accidental water damage, or age, or because a book seller couldn't rid themselves of it to a customer. In short, the author is not concerned with restricting himself to books that have been prosecuted against, or unique volumes, but all books in general.

With such a scope it is unsurprising that the writing dull. By page 50 we have already become so desensitized to another 50,000 volumes being lost that we hardly care. Moreover, as Polastron doesn't make an effort to create a context in which these books were destroyed, the true tragedy, if there is one, is lost upon us.

Working through the first 100 pages one may be forgiven for having the impression that this book was written for classics majors. So many individuals in so many diverse periods of history are mentioned that the book would be impossible to follow intelligently without a trained background in Greek, Roman, and Middle Eastern history. Certainly for those with this background the book may be of interest as a reference guide. Those less fortunate should not expect the author to spend time bringing them up to speed. The most he'll say is that so-and-so is "famous", ergo we should care, though why that individual is famous will remain a mystery.

Aside from this problem there is a more general issue of quality. The book is in sore need of better editing. Much of the information is superfluous and embodies the kind of material belonging in an appendix (of which, it should be noted, there are two, although these seem more like continuations of the book than proper appendixes). Furthermore, there is a severe slant in information, severely favoring the Christian West over the Chinese East. While there are passages on China, the gross difference in chapter sizes leaves one feeling as though a courtesy was being done. When some areas are so detailed we cannot help but perceive a bias against those sections left bare.

The most jarring event that readers must prepare themselves for however is in the complete change in style that the author undergoes in the last sixth of the book. Until then, we can say that "Books on Fire" is boring. Yet once the author begins to his contemporary times his voice changes from that of a historian to what we, in America, would recognize as a continental philosopher in the style of Mereau Ponty, or Michel Foucault.

Gone are the endless lists of destroyed titles and in come the nearly nonsensical ramblings that, while filled with scorn, dismay, and spite, are lacking in anything substantive. Writing on modern media, for example, the author says, "Yet during tihs time the media have made themselves the capable echo of the usual stream of mayflies attracted by the sunlamps. From Kabul, from Sarajevo they come and they go, hatching their three-hundred-line communiques in which the only new information is "I was there". They are the jet set of the world's tragedies. It must be said that it was a fine party. It cost $100 billion."

From here the author becomes ever more colorful and, unfortunately, irrelevant as he rails against digitization while never confronting the real circumstances that make alternatives unfeasible (he attacks, among other things, the continued production of books that are not protected against acidity, never-minding the cost or the wastefulness of such a procedure for protecting a product that, as he himself attests to, gets destroyed in 50% of the cases anyway).

It is almost as though, halfway through his book, the author, recalling his French philosophical heritage, feels compelled to take up the pen and begin a free-thought rant lasting over 50 pages on his personal views of modernity. This would be interesting were it not for the great expectations this book had conjured up in us. With a title so gripping, "Books on Fire" makes promise that it not only fails to keep but, in large part, completely ignores. While this does not necessarily make it a bad book, it does make for one that mismatches content with aspiration, leaving, at least this reader, thoroughly disappointed. I can only recommend this book to those who feel confident about their classical background and are not interested in a deeper study of the cause behind the destruction of books, rather than a record of this destruction.

In a Nutshell, this book is just awful. If you have read the earlier review written by Mr Von Deuten, he truly is on the money, accurate and says it all. This is BEYOND boring and dull and presented in such a dry textbook like manner, the reader can not get past 75 pages without quitting. Although some of the information MIGHT BE interesting if the author had stopped to take a breath and given more detailed and easy to swallow descriptions, it's presented so badly. THe author might has well just have given us a list of names and addresses and time periods. You are whisked along so fast through so many names, dates, countries, and historical data that jumps around like a jackrabbit on the run, you cant latch on to one thought long enough to be interested in any one particular library or biblilophile in one area before you are off and running into the next and the next. Very quickly you just dont care. I dont see how anyone could read this and remember a thing they read even a few chapters in. I was so disappointed in this book and would not recommend it to anyone and I can't find anything redeeming or kind to say about it.

While I agree with much of what Mr. Van Deuten posted in his review, I do see some utility to the work.

Yes, the work needs editing. Yes, the author often just pushes through a litany of destruction with only the barest commentary other than to announce his disgust and anger. Yes, the work is uneven in its coverage and often too willing to interject angry and colorful opinion in lieu of more detail and background.

However, I do think he has a good bibliography, and as a jumping off point to other works and further research it is useful. For example, the section on the destruction of Chinese books was the most thorough work i had read in book form of the cyclic literary purges in that nation. I will certainly look for more thorough works on that subject, with a bit more knowledge of people and dates than I had before.

One clear point that the author made was that the destruction of writings does go hand in hand with the destruction of people. I do think that more focused works, such as the loss of books in ancient times or in China or in modern Europe will work better for more advanced students of book history.

At first, I found the author's style turgid. But I was mesmerized by the sheer volume of fascinating and scholarly details, so I persisted. As I became immersed in this wonderful book, I also became accustomed to the author's blend of sly asides and wry commentary and his vast scope and depth of information. I recognized that my initial reaction reflected on me and not this book.

Bibliophiles will feel pang after pang as the relentless destruction of the world's libraries, including everything from Sumerian texts to modern-day digitization, is chronicled. Others will feel a chill to realize how fragmentary is the history of human thought. This book suggests that the majority of human literary and scholarly works are lost, via a long history of destruction. It was humbling to me to ponder that, though people in 2008 assume that we are the inheritors of a long, cumulative history of learning, in reality, we just know of the random scraps remaining from a great and tragic decimation.

This book changed my view on the history of human thought. The author spent ten years researching it, and the resulting deeply rich work is a stellar accomplishment that I will return to again and again.

As a supporter and weekly visitor to libraries, this book piqued my interest while sitting in the "New" section of the library.

Contents:
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1: In the Cradle of Libraries
Chapter 2: The Papyrus Region
Chapter 3: Islam of the First Days
Chapter 4: People of the Book
Chapter 5: Asia before the Twentieth Century
Chapter 6: The Christian West
Chapter 7: The New Biblioclasts
Chapter 8: Peace Damages
Chapter 9: An Embarrassment of Modernity
Chapter 10: Flameproof Knowledge
Chapter 11: Epilogue: Return to Alexandria
Appendix 1: The Great Writers Are Unanimous: Delenda est bibliotheca!
Appendix 2: A Short History of the Census of Lost Books with a Legend to Bring It to a Close-The Hidden Library
Appendix 3: A Selective Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History, by Lucien X. Polastron, could be viewed as the standard for the cataloging of the destruction of libraries and books through the ages. Polastron takes the reader on a historical (and not so historical) journey as he details the gathering of knowledge, only to describe its destruction. While we are familiar with the great library in Alexandria, Polastron describes other libraries, of similar importance, that have vanished from the Earth. Some were discovered in the 1900's only to see their contents be trampled under foot or sold off as kindling for fires. While it is easy to visualize the fires, natural disasters, and the elements that have consumed many of the libraries, Polastron also weaves a tale of the possible destruction of this generations libraries due to the digitalization of books. The idea that we can read books for free may become a thing of the past.

Overall, this book was worthy of my time. But it seemed as though this was two books, the first half, if you can get through it, read like a scholarly paper. It is very rough going. But then, about Chapter 6, the tone changes and it becomes a very readable and enjoyable book. It seemed as though there were two editors working on the book, and they didn't speak to each other. I can imagine that many people will read a couple of chapters only to become discouraged and close the book. If you can get through them, the rest of the book is quite good. Another issue I had with the book; early chapters seemed to give the reader some context for the destruction of libraries, but the later ones do not provide you with this background. It was if this wasn't important.

Even though the latter chapters are much more readable and enjoyable than the first half, it is hard to recommend this book to the general population. It seems focused on those in the library sciences and historians. It is an important book, but not very accessible. And that is too bad.

This book is a sobering parable about the ongoing vulnerability of cultural heritage as a result of natural and man-made disasters.