The world today is built on an almost incomprehensible quantity of knowledge that has actually been passed down in books.
With such an abundant history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often simple to forget how incredibly lucky 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 huge proportion of all the books that have actually ever been composed (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can quickly change the way that you look at the world, which 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 very important to bear in mind that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humanity's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, just due to the fact that the huge bulk of individuals might not read, meaning that most books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a short boom during the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped drastically throughout the Middle Ages. Books ended up being uncommon treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the enduring timeless texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were a few of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the professional keepers of understanding like biology and faith that all of us have access to in the modern-day world.
It can be tough to envision what the world would resemble today if the huge bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the large majority of history the large majority of people could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the invention of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books far more available. Naturally, it was still just truly the richest and well-educated that could read or write, but it enabled a whole host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have occurred if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are fortunate to be able to merely log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily access the totality of human knowledge.