Never before have books been so available as they are today in the modern-day world; keep reading to find out more.
With such a rich history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how incredibly lucky we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a huge percentage of all the books that have actually ever been composed (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can easily change the manner in which you take a look at the world, which has been true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built on understanding that has been passed down through books, whether that is philosophy, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had not been for the books that changed minds throughout the ages.
It can be tough to envision what the world would be like today if the vast majority of individuals were unable to read, but for the large majority of history the vast bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the creation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more available. Obviously, it was still only actually the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, but it made it possible for a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been dispersed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to simply log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily access the totality of human understanding.
It is very important to keep in mind that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humanity's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, simply because the huge bulk of people might not read, implying that most books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a short boom during the classical period of antiquity, the amount of literate people dropped significantly throughout the Middle Ages. Books ended up being rare treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were a few of the only members of the populace who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of understanding like biology and religion that all of us have access to in the modern world.