Why did Richard love this book?
Winchester brings a long life of research to this study of the ways we have striven over millennia to preserve and disseminate knowledge, from the earliest writing to books to the internet. He sees knowledge as the force for good and recounts how evil can seek to suppress, subvert, or misuse it.
In my poems, I try to question our ideas of progress. The good we achieve is fragile, always dependent on an endless dialogue of self-awareness.
1 author picked Knowing What We Know as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
“A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter . . . . Simon Winchester has firmly earned his place in history . . . as a promulgator of knowledge of every variety, perhaps the last of the famous explorers who crisscrossed the now-vanished British Empire and reported what they found to an astonished world.” — New York Times
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is award winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass…