Burning Books And Leveling Libraries.

Burning Books And Leveling Libraries

Rebecca Knuth

Praeger

88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

1275990079 $39.95 www.praeger.com

Rebecca Knuth (Chair of the Library and Information Science Program, University of Hawaii) presents Burning Books And Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Culture Destruction, a scholarly study of nationalist, ethnic, religious, or political extremism taken to such lengths as to result in the wholesale destruction of libraries as an all-out assault upon cultural values the extremists despise. As Knuth shows, destruction of books goes hand in hand with destruction of people. Burning Books And Leveling Libraries especially focuses upon incidents of biblioclasm in the late 20th and earth 21st century. Chapters examine the annihilation of books and libraries as tactic of political or ethnic protest, and move on to explore the execution and aftermath of libricidal, homicidal, and genocidal conflicts in Germany, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, and more. The final chapter harshly scrutinizes the war in Iraq and the looting and vandalism of Iraqi libraries and other cultural edifices during the American occupation. Ultimately, Knuth reveals that using military might alone to advocate and enforce ideals is futile when humanitarian, security, and cultural concerns are ignored. Deftly researched and bitingly exact in its portrayal of extremist psychology and its terrible consequences, Burning Books And Leveling Libraries is highly recommended, as is Knuth's previous study in the field, "Libricide."