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The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World
HarperCollins
December 2005
384 pages
ISBN: 0060593237
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Inspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British
Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the
printed word, Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively
consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in
the world, works that have both nudged the course of history
and fired the imagination of countless influential
people. In his fifth work to examine a specific
aspect of book culture, Basbanes also asks what we can know
about such figures as John Milton, Edward Gibbon, John
Locke, Isaac Newton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Adams,
Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Henry James, Thomas
Edison, Helen Keller -- even the notorious Marquis de Sade
and Adolf Hitler -- by knowing what they have read. He shows
how books that many of these people have consulted, in some
cases annotated with their marginal notes, can offer
tantalizing clues to the evolution of their character and
the development of their thought. Taking the concept
one step further, Basbanes profiles some of the most
articulate readers of our time -- David McCullough, Harold
Bloom, Robert Fagles, Robert Coles, Helen Vendler, Elaine
Pagels, Daniel Aaron, Christopher Ricks, Matthew Bruccoli,
and Perri Klass among them -- who discuss such relevant
concepts as literary canons, classic works in translation,
the timelessness of poetry, the formation of sacred texts,
and the power of literature to train physicians, nurture
children, and rehabilitate criminal offenders.
"Basbanes has a deep and abiding passion for books -- a
joyful addiction," Dan Smith wrote in the Toronto Star of
Patience & Fortitude, characterizing his body of work as
"part travelogue, part scholarship, and all story." The
tradition continues with Every Book Its Reader.
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