A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World

Nicholas Basbanes has enriched the lives of bibliophiles with his A Gentle Madness and Patience and Fortitude, the first two volumes in this trilogy devoted to books and the people who love them. He has now brought the trilogy to a close with A Splendor of Letters, which is just as fascinating as either of the first two volumes. A Splendor of Letters is a wide ranging look at many aspects of the book world. History is served through an examination of several attempts to destroy the written word, from Nazi Germany to Pol Pot's Cambodia; and with happier stories of archaeologists' rediscoveries of ancient libraries. More stories of book collectors of the sort that made A Gentle Madness so interesting are also provided, as is more material on the problems libraries and collections have when they run out of space and must determine what to do with the overflow, which was a major topic in Patience and Fortitude. The main thrust of A Splendor of Letters, however, is a defense of the book in its traditional form against those who would proclaim its death at the hands of technology.As with all of Mr. Basbanes' works (which also include Among the Gently Mad, A Primer for Book Collectors), the fascinating material is enhanced by the beauty of the writing. No book lover should pass this by.

Reading the works of Nicholas A. Basbanes is somewhat like attending a series of lectures by a master professor, one who loves his subject passionately and seems to know every aspect of it. In this volume, as in the preceding works of his trilogy, Mr. Basbanes takes you around the world and back in forth in time, yet the journey always has a constant purpose: to explore the many ways in which humankind has transmitted its thoughts in written form.A central theme of this work is the many assaults on the written word through the ages, and their ultimate triumph of survival. From the destruction of Carthage to the Nazi book-burnings and the more recent destruction of libraries in Tibet, Cambodia, Sarajevo, the written word has again and again been one of the prime targets for those who wish to subjugate a people. Yet for all that has been lost through violence and neglect, much has been preserved.Here Basbanes turns to threats to books of a different sort--libraries discarding little-used volumes because of space issues, or various electronic technologies that have been heralded as being the replacement for the codex, or bound book, as we have known it for centuries. Yet the book endures, and if enough people with the passion of Nicholas A. Basbanes are around, it should endure for countless years to come. This book and its two predecessors represents an educational, entertaining and thought-provoking distillation of a career spent learning about and celebrating the written word. Although "A Splendor of Letters" marks the completion of his trilogy, I hope this will not be the last word Mr. Basbanes has to share on the subject. And I'm sure many other readers feel the same way.--William C. Hall

I've truly enjoyed Mr. Basbanes books and this one is no exception. Mr. Basbanes is clearly in love with the written word, even as it happens to be found in between the covers of the book we've come to recognize. As Bookreporter.com remarked, this book can be somewhat disjointed, but it's one of the reasons I fell into reading it with such joy. This book isn't a scholarly work in the sense that it will bore the eyebrows off of you. To those persons I read sections, they found the material intriguing and interesting. Two of those persons are now on a waiting list at the local library to read it. (Which is quite astonishing when one considers that these persons aren't regular book readers, let alone a bibliophile as I am...)I certainly cannot bring any additional information to the excellent review by Bookreporter.com. As someone who loves reading, books, words, etc. I feel that those persons that own Basbanes' first books in the trilogy, this final book wouldn't be a waste of your time and money to add it to your collection. "A Splendor of Letters" is entertaining, informative and enlightening. I'm quite pleased it resides in my personal library.

Nicholas A. Basbanes has a love affair going with the printed word. Not just the book --- the printed word, be it chiseled on stone 2,000 years ago, scrawled on wallpaper, palm leaves or cloth, or even imprinted on a computer screen the day before yesterday.That is the main message delivered in this, the third of a trio of books he has written celebrating the triumphs, tragedies, perils and potentialities of print. A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS, a kind of miscellaneous grab bag of print-talk, was preceded by A GENTLE MADNESS (1995) and PATIENCE & FORTITUDE (2001). Truly, a man obsessed with his subject.A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS is a book full of fascinating bits of information on all sorts of subjects relating to the printed word. This is at once its main attraction and its principal drawback. Much of the information packed into these pages is interesting in itself, but the book has no single overarching theme, seemingly no real purpose except to display the author's enthusiasm and interest for his subject.Among the many topics touched upon in this bag of scholarly/literary potato chips are the disappearance of many important texts produced by ancient civilizations; the question of whether a modern copy of an ancient book can or should replace the original; the wanton destruction of valuable libraries in places like ancient Carthage, Nazi Germany, Sarajevo, Cambodia and Tibet; the morality of physically mutilating books in order to turn their valuable illustrations into objects of commerce; the morality of breaking up great library collections so their contents can be sold off for cash to meet current needs; the best means of preserving printed records for the longest time; and --- inevitably --- the already looming question of whether electronic books will make the familiar object we hold in our hands today a mere museum curiosity anytime soon.Basbanes tries hard to be objective about all of this. He has sought out people on all sides of every question he considers --- but his sympathies obviously seem in the end to lie with the preservationists and the physical book rather than with its electronic doppelganger.Every new development in the advancement of print has been greeted, he assures us, by people who saw it as the end of literature. He has resurrected a Medieval monk named Johannes Trithemius, who urged his fellow monks not to stop copying manuscripts by hand just because printing had been invented ("The written word on parchment will last a thousand years. The printed word is on paper. How long will it last? The most you can expect a book of paper to survive is two hundred years..."). And even so modest a modern forward step as the idea of equipping pencils with rubber erasers rang alarm bells among educators ("the easier errors may be corrected, the more errors will be made").Basbanes seems thoroughly at home rummaging around in the distant past to describe fascinating documentary finds in odd corners of Egypt, Pakistan and similar remote places.