{"version":"1.0","type":"link","provider_name":"Hardcover","provider_url":"https://hardcover.app","cache_age":86400,"title":"Library: An Unquiet History","url":"https://hardcover.app/books/library","description":"\u0026quot;From the clay-tablet collections of ancient Mesopotamia to the storied Alexandria libraries in Egypt, from the burned scrolls of China\u0026#39;s Qing Dynasty to the book pyres of the Hitler Youth, from the great medieval library in Baghdad to the priceless volumes destroyed in the multi-cultural Bosnian National Library in Sarajevo, the library has been a battleground of competing notions of what books mean to us. Battles explores how, throughout its many changes, the library has served two contradictory impulses: on the one hand, the urge to exalt canons of literature, to secure and worship the best and most beautiful words; on the other, the desire to contain and control all forms of human knowledge.\u0026quot;--Jacket.","author_name":"Matthew Battles","author_url":"https://hardcover.app/authors/matthew-battles","thumbnail_url":"https://assets.hardcover.app/external_data/3370155/bb2b17849c9321206468724cfdacaad8f9a59376.jpeg","thumbnail_width":314,"thumbnail_height":475}