An anchor in the sand. (Starting Here).

The world seems to be falling apart and I am holding a book in my hand. * My chair is mired in the spring-summer sand, but every few waves I shift my position as the water threatens my feet. In the background are dunes, but here, screened from the sun's and wind's burn, I need only blow away a little grit from my book's buttery, sleek pages and open myself to the contained unknown.

UNESCO defines a book as a collection of leaves of paper or other material printed and bound along one side with more than forty-eight pages. Pages printed on one or both sides, gathered into quires or folios, superceded papyrus and parchment rolls in the fourth century CE. Religious books were the principal form of written culture, and the idea of the Book as a source of truth also extends to other works. In many societies, whether their people read or not, the book is sacred; censorship or limitation is seen as an attack on the freedom to share ideas. Books still hold a central position in most systems of education. Teaching someone to read is setting them free, since by reading they cannot help but encounter ideas: Constitution Avenue, Embarcadero, Don't Drink the Water, Images in the Mirror May be Closer Than You Think.

Books are media for sustained thought; the text is stable, dependable, and can be read again and again. My volume's weight is comforting, pulling me in but not down. Here I can dry dive deep among blues and greens painted by words and my own imagination. Reading, I meet like kinds and recognize that someone else has thought or felt as I do; I am not alone. We--the reader and the writer--know terror and panic, frustration and impotence, anger, loss, but also joy, warmth, reciprocity, pride, forgiveness, and forbearance. A book is a safe place to meet aliens, to struggle and lose or win, to practice patience and waiting to see what happens rather than jumping to the end. Here, I am in control to make the images, etch the emotions, evoke memories, characterize situations, overcome adversity. I do not see a stack of mangled bodies--oh, I have seen other people's pictures, but since my head does not own them I can read without drowning in despair, to find the kernel of survival and reward in humanity articulated. I turn the pages and move on.

Roget's New Thesaurus says to read is "to perceive and recognize the meaning of." It lists "understanding" as its synonym. To many, a book is just a commodity, yet reading even the most ordinary pamphlet or paperback puts the reader in a cultural history that stretches back at least three millennia. It has been said that today print culture is in decline, but contrarily, the book industry has grown in the late twentieth century. Reported annual production in the English-speaking world is enormous: over two billion copies of new books in the U.S. alone. People appear to be reading and consulting more books than ever before.

The world may be falling apart, but we can hold a book in our hands. This summer, try taking a bound source of entertainment and escapement with you (see page 21). Exercise your imagination, stretch your understanding, flex your fantasy, practice your politics, strengthen your heritage.