Never ever before have books been so accessible as they are today in the modern-day world; keep reading to find out more.
With such a rich history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes easy to forget how extremely fortunate 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 proportion 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 alter the way that you look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history too. The modern world is built upon knowledge that has actually been handed 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 actually not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.
It is essential to keep 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. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, just due to the fact that the huge bulk of individuals could not read, meaning that many books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a short boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped considerably throughout the Middle Ages. Books ended up being uncommon treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the enduring classic texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern world.
It can be hard to imagine what the world would be like today if the huge bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the huge bulk of history the huge bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more accessible. Of course, it was still only actually the wealthiest and well-read that could read or write, however it allowed an entire host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been dispersed around the world. 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.