Showing results by author "Alberto Manguel" in All Categories

No one knows if there was a man named Homer, but there is little doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name form the cornerstone of Western literature. "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey", with their incomparable tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Ulysses and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods, are familiar to most people because they are so pervasive.

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000 volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading.  

Tracing 25 centuries of human history, from the fourth century BC to the present day, Manguel dedicates each of his chapters to a single character - ranging from our best-known thinkers, scientists, and artists to seemingly minor figures of whom we know little more than one inspired utterance - in whom he identifies a particular way of asking the question "why?"