Never ever before have books been so accessible as they are today in the modern-day world; keep reading to learn more.
With such a rich history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often easy to forget how extremely fortunate 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 big percentage of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can easily alter the manner in which you take a look at the world, which has held true throughout all of history too. The modern-day world is built upon knowledge that has been passed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had actually not been for the books that changed minds throughout the ages.
It's important to remember that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of mankind's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. Most stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, simply because the large majority of people might not read, indicating that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a quick boom throughout the classical period of antiquity, the amount of literate individuals dropped dramatically during the Middle Ages. Books became rare treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern world.
It can be hard to imagine what the world would be like today if the huge bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the huge bulk of history the large majority of people could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more accessible. Of course, it was still just actually the wealthiest and well-read that could read or write, however it allowed a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are lucky 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 quickly gain access to the totality of human knowledge.