The Centre
for the History of the Book is very pleased to be associated
with this important title. Professor Knuth is Chair
of the Library and Information Science Program at The
University of Hawaii, and undertook much of the research
on the Burning Books and Leveling Libraries while
she was a Visiting Fellow at the CHB.
In her previous book, Libricide, Rebecca Knuth
focused on book destruction by authoritarian regimes:
Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia , Iraqis in Kuwait , Maoists
during the Cultural Revolution in China , and the Chinese
Communists in Tibet. But authoritarian governments are
not the only perpetrators. Extremists of all stripes--through
terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and other
forms of mass violence--are also responsible for widespread
cultural destruction, as she demonstrates in this new
book. Burning Books and Leveling Libraries is structured
in three parts.
· Part
I is devoted to struggles by extremists over voice and
power at the local level, where destruction of books
and libraries is employed as a tactic of political or
ethnic protest.
· Part
II discusses the aftermath of power struggles in Germany
, Afghanistan , and Cambodia , where the winners were
utopians who purged libraries in efforts to purify their
societies and maintain power.
· Part
III examines the fate of libraries when there is war
and a resulting power vacuum.
The book concludes with a discussion of the events in
Iraq in 2003, and the responsibility of American war
strategists for the widespread pillaging that ensued
after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Table
of Contents:
•
Preface
•
Understanding Modern Biblioclasm
•
Tracing the Path of Extremism From Robespierre to Milosevic
Grappling
for Voice and Power
•
Political Protestors and Amsterdam 's South African
Institute, 1984
•
Ethnic Biblioclasm, 1980-2005
Absolute
Power and the Drive to Purify Society
•
National Socialism and the Destruction of Berlin 's
Institute for Sexual Knowledge, 1933
•
Secular Fanaticism and the Auto-Genocide of Cambodia
, 1975-1979
•
Fundamentalism and the Destruction of Afghanistan 's
Cultural Heritage, 1994-2001
War,
Power Vacuum, and Anarchy
•
Dueling Ideologies and Total War, 1939-1945
•
Anarchy and Acquisitive Vandalism, 1967-2003
•
Errors of Omission and Cultural Destruction in Iraq
, 2003
•
Index
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