Library History

A history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age. “Engaging [and] ambitious” —The Washington Post Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold...

Echo London never wanted to be the curator of the People’s Library, a digital collection of human consciousness. But when she’s assigned as its head librarian, Echo is entrusted with humanity’s greatest minds and historical figures, all of whom have been recreated through controversial consciousness-capturing technology that lets visitors interact with the dead. But an anti-tech rebellion is stirring. When a rebel attack results in tragedy, a mysterious woman wearing an ancient death mask leaves behind cryptic final words for Echo: It all begins with nothing. 

Ancient Civilizations – Mesopotamia History – The Cradle of Civilization – The Epic of Gilgamesh – The Code of Hammurabi – Sumer and Babylon – The Assyrian Empire – Ancient Near East History Five thousand years ago, on a scorching plain of mud between the Tigris and the Euphrates, humankind did something it had never done before: it built the first cities, invented writing, and carved the first laws — creating the world we still live in today. They called their land Mesopotamia. Their story is bloodier, stranger, and more astonishing than any myth — and almost everything ...

NEWLY REVISED AND EXPANDED: Now with 29 complete texts and updated scholarship. In 1945, a farmer in Upper Egypt cracked open a sealed clay jar and found thirteen codices buried since 367 CE. Inside were gospels, cosmologies, hymns, and visions from a rival Christianity so sophisticated it nearly won. For a thousand years, everything we knew about these texts came from the people who destroyed them. Now you can read them yourself. Twenty-nine texts in clear, modern English. No archaic phrasing. No dense scholarly apparatus. Just the words, made readable. The Gospels: The Gospel of Thomas (...

In the Pacific, there is an island that looks like a big fish sunning itself in the sea. Around it blue dolphins swim, otters play, and sea birds abound. Karana is the Indian girl who lived alone for years on the Island of the Blue Dolphins. Hers is not only an unusual adventure of survival, but...

A new holiday story set in the Scottish Highlands to warm booklovers’ hearts by Jenny Colgan, New York Times bestselling author of Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop. Mirren Sutherland stumbled into a career as an antiquarian book hunter after finding a priceless antique book in her great...

Secrets? Myths? One giant boxed set? The award-winning History Smashers series delivers a four-audiobook collection that takes down some of the biggest misconceptions, secrets, and outright lies of early American history! In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean and discovered...

Ancient Mysteries - Lost Civilizations - Hidden History - Legendary Heroes - Myth vs. Reality - Fairy Tale Origins - Forgotten Legends - Quests & Kingdoms What if every story you were told as a child was hiding something true? Behind the wicked stepmothers and enchanted castles, behind the sword pulled from stone, behind the golden cities explorers died searching for, real history is buried, waiting to be uncovered. Legends and Folklore of the World takes you across centuries of storytelling to unearth where humanity's most enduring legends actually came from, and what they reveal about the...

British airman Dym Ingleford is convinced that the young German prisoner, Max Eckermann, is his brother Anthony, who was kidnapped years before. Raised in the Nazi ideology, Tony has by chance tumbled into British hands. Dym has brought him back, at least temporarily, to the family he neither remembers nor will acknowledge as his own.

Christian Theology - Church History - Saint Augustine - Christian Philosophy - Spiritual Classics - Patristics - Religious Biography - History of Ideas What turns a restless young man into one of the most influential voices in Western thought? Saint Augustine Made Easy brings together four accessible, elegant, and deeply engaging books for readers who want to understand Augustine of Hippo without getting lost in academic complexity. This box follows the full arc of a life marked by ambition, doubt, desire, conversion, controversy, and an unending search for truth. In Saint Augustine, Life, ...

Ancient wonder. A seductive rival. A discovery to die for. Darwin Lacroix drops everything—including his fiancée, Eyrún—to pursue a new lead on the lost Library of Alexandria. The trail begins in Rome, but it belongs to Tessa Santarossa—a brilliant Italian operator who plays by her own rules and never shows her full hand. What starts as a promising discovery turns into a dangerous race across a two-thousand-year-old path. Armed militants want the truth buried, and Tessa’s agenda is as elusive as the prize itself. Eyrún sees the threat immediately—and when the hunt turns violent...

Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve. The Library is a celebration of books as objects, a celebration of the anthropology and physicality of books and bookish space, and an account of the human side of these hallowed spaces by a leading and passionate bibliophile.

From the author of Teddy, a dazzling historical novel about an American librarian in 1920s Switzerland who must face the truth of decisions she made to survive during the First World War. In the wake of the Great War, American Helen Fox lives a solitary life in Switzerland as a librarian...

#1 New York Times bestseller #1 Washington Post bestseller #1 Indie Bestseller USA Today Bestseller John Green, award-winning author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious...

Sometime around 295 BCE, the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt built a library that would become the intellectual center of the ancient world. For centuries, the Library of Alexandria housed hundreds of thousands of scrolls — the accumulated knowledge of Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian civilizations. Works of science, philosophy, literature, medicine, and mathematics that existed nowhere else on Earth. Then it was gone. Not in a single dramatic fire — that's the myth. The real story is slower, uglier, and more instructive. The Library of Alexandria died the way most knowledge dies: ...

Gnosticism Explained: Ancient Secret Knowledge, The Gnostic Gospels, Dualism, Sophia, the Demiurge, and the Quest for Spiritual Awakening in Early Christianity What was Gnosticism, and why was it considered one of the most controversial movements in early Christian history? Gnosticism Explained takes readers deep into the hidden world of ancient secret knowledge, exploring the Gnostic gospels, the myth of Sophia, the mysterious Demiurge, and the radical idea that salvation comes through inner awakening rather than external authority. Drawing on historical research and the groundbreaking ...

Discover how Impressionism transformed the art world and laid the foundation for modern art as we know it. This comprehensive exploration traces the movement's origins in 1870s France through its profound influence on twentieth-century artistic development. From Monet's water lilies to Renoir's intimate portraits, explore the masterpieces that challenged academic tradition and revolutionized how artists investigate color, light, and visual perception. Learn how Impressionism's radical principles opened pathways to Fauvism, Cubism, abstraction, and beyond—making it the pivotal movement ...

Are you looking for the PRINT EDITION? THEN Go to: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1937735206 TITLE: THE COVENANT: One Nation Under God - America's Sacred and Immutable Connection to Ancient Israel AS SEEN ON Glenn Beck May 17th. This book spent time at #3 on Amazon overall and was ranked #1 in 5 categories including #1 in History titles, #1 in US History, #1 in Books on Israel and History. 10's of thousands of copies were sold during that period. Find out why the book continues to re-set the foundation of American History studies. Find out why Glenn Beck said: "I have been trying to ...

THE DEFINITIVE EDITION Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, the remarkable diary that has become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. Updated for the 75th Anniversary of the Diary’s...

Mildred D. Taylor's Newbery Award-winning masterpiece with an introduction written and read by Jacqueline Woodson, just in time for its 40th Anniversary! Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and...