So what are books good for…?

My best answer is that books are encased knowledge. Books take ideas and set them down, transforming them through the limitations of space into thinking, usable by others. In 1959, C.P. Snow threw down the challenge of "two cultures," the scientific and the humanistic, pursuing their separate, unconnected lives within developed societies. In the new-media ecology of the 21st century, we may not have closed that gap, but the two cultures of the contemporary world are the culture of data and the culture of narrative. Narrative is rarely collective. It isn't infinitely expandable. Narrative has a shape and a temporality, and it ends, just as our lives do. Books tell stories.

I love old books...the worn leather covers, grand libraries with nooks and crannies loaded with information to sift through. There is nothing like holding a book in your hands and feeling the pages run through your fingertips, and, I happen to be crazy about old libraries.

One of the most beautiful books I've come across recently, Libraries, is by the gifted photographer Candida Höfer. Published in 2005 it is still available to purchase via used book dealers. Ms. Höfer's book pictures wonderful libraries from around the world. The details are stunning. Take a look ...

The color plates in this book beautifully capture seats of knowledge.  Stunning, isn't it?  If a picture is worth a thousand words, than this book is a Webster’s Unabridged.