Never before have actually books been so available as they are today in the modern world; keep reading to find out more.
It is very important to remember that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely because the large majority of people might not read, meaning that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a quick boom during the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped drastically throughout the Middle Ages. Books became uncommon treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were some of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of understanding like biology and religion that we all have access to in the contemporary world.
With such an abundant 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 ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can quickly change the way that you take a look at the world, which has been true throughout all of history also. The modern-day world is built upon knowledge that has actually been handed 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 not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.
It can be difficult to envision what the world would resemble today if the vast majority of individuals were unable to read, but for the huge majority of history the vast majority of individuals might not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the invention of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books a lot more available. Naturally, it was still just really the richest and well-educated that could read or write, however it made it possible for an entire host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have occurred if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky to be able to simply log onto a website 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 knowledge.