"Long before the invention of printing, let alone the availability of a daily newspaper, people desired to be informed. In the pre-industrial era news was gathered and shared through conversation and gossip, civic ceremony, celebration, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals, and the first news-sheets, expanding the news community from local to worldwide. This groundbreaking book tracks the history...

Exploring the various roles books have played in conflicts around the world, an esteemed literary historian shows how books have shaped modern military history and accounts for the power—and the ambivalence—of words at war.

"Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with beanbags and children's drawings-the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, the first major work of its kind, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen trace this extraordinary history, from the famous collections of...