num_pages: 373
description: 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 thoughtthe 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.
language: English
title: The Library at Night
publisher: Yale University Press