The library at night
Alberto Manguel (Author)
"Inspired by the process of creating a library for his home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. "Libraries have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic." In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a meditation on the meaning of libraries. Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends 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 personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought, oral "memory libraries" kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, and the library of books never written"--Publisher description
Print Book, English, 2008
Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2008
History
373 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 24 cm
9780300139143, 9780300151305, 0300139144, 0300151306
183257292
The library as myth
The library as order
The library as space
The library as power
The library as shadow
The library as shape
The library as chance
The library as workshop
The library as mind
The library as island
The library as survival
The library as oblivion
The library as imagination
The library as identity
The library as home
Reprint. Originally published: Canada : Alfred A. Knopf, 2006