Burning the Books: RADIO 4 BOOK of the WEEK

Burning the Books: RADIO 4 BOOK of the WEEK PDF Author: Richard Ovenden
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781529378771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
An unforgettable 3,000-year-old journey - from Mesopotamian clay tablets trying to predict the future, to Tudor book-hunters and Nazi bonfires, and on into the dangers of our increasingly digital existence, Burning the Books shows how the preservation of knowledge is vital for the survival of civilization itself. 'A wonderful book, full of good stories and burning with passion' SUNDAY TIMES, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Compelling, fascinating and rewarding' LITERARY REVIEW 'When books burn, it is more than just words under attack . . . this extraordinary book should stir us to thinking and to action' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A tale of ingenuity and deep courage' GUARDIAN 'A stark warning - the truth itself is under attack' THE TIMES, BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Burning the Books

Burning the Books PDF Author: Richard Ovenden
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.

The Photographer at Sixteen

The Photographer at Sixteen PDF Author: George Szirtes
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 0857058525
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey. **RADIO 4's BOOK OF THE WEEK FROM 15 March 2021** "A truly remarkable book . . . fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL *WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE JEWISH WINGATE PRIZE* "I've read no memoir that moved me more" MIRANDA SEYMOUR "The writing is always scrupulous . . . [a] compelling memoir" BLAKE MORRISON "Beautifully written and utterly compelling" Sunday Times "An original, probingly thoughtful memoir" EVA HOFFMANN In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania. The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.

NAB Reports

NAB Reports PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Radio
Languages : en
Pages : 1068

Book Description

Burning Out

Burning Out PDF Author: Katherine May
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Violet has a good job, a luxury apartment, a successful life. But she feels drained and pressurised and, on the verge of snapping, retreats to her home town. There, she meets a girl: carefree, sassy, vivacious and everything Violet wishes she was. Slowly, though, comes the realisation that this girl is living Violet's own past. Haunted by her past self, Violet knows that history will repeat itself - and knows that it will have catastrophic consequences.

Palm Beach County During World War II

Palm Beach County During World War II PDF Author: Susan Gillis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439652058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
During World War II, Palm Beach County was a beehive of activity. Beachgoers witnessed the destruction left in the wake of U-boat attacks and then helped rescue survivors and retrieve the dead. One of the first Civil Air Patrol units to hunt German U-boats operated from Palm Beach County. Morrison Field in West Palm Beach served as the take-off point for Army Air Corps planes destined for battle lines throughout the world. Boca Raton Army Air Field was the headquarters for training airmen in top-secret RADAR technology. The US Army, Navy, and Coast Guard used resort hotels for training sites and hospitals.

Portraits of Irish Art in Practice

Portraits of Irish Art in Practice PDF Author: Jennifer Keating
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031340744
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
This book mines the space where aesthetic expression meets lived experience for Irish artists Rita Duffy, Mairéad McClean, Paula McFetridge and Ursula Burke. Portrait essays woven with photographs, document each artist’s coming of age in Ireland and Northern Ireland, in the context of her emerging practice. As individuals, their work considers infringements on human rights, systemic violence, gender roles and the negotiation of figurative and literal borders and boundaries. Together, they interrogate past and present conflict and emergence from conflict, locally and globally. Their critical work is threaded with hope in the context of past and present political fragmentation. Works considered include Rita Duffy’s paintings, drawings and animation like Siege, The Emperor Has No Clothes and Anatomy of Hope; Mairéad McClean’s films No More, Broadcast and Making Her Mark; Paula McFetridge’s productions like convictions, staged at the Crumlin Road Courthouse, This is What We Sang, performed at the Belfast Synagogue and Belfast Quartered, A Love Story, a promenade through Belfast’s LGBTQ+ underground; and Ursula Burke’s sculptures like Bonfire, Blue Sphinx and Peach Caryatid, and embroidery like The Politicians Frieze.
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