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Paperback The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, (a Wake Forest University Studium Book) Book

ISBN: 0520072553

ISBN13: 9780520072558

The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, (a Wake Forest University Studium Book)

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Format: Paperback

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Book Overview

The Library of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the Ancient World, has haunted Western culture for over 2,000 years. The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt--successors of Alexander the Great--had a staggering ambition: to house all of the books ever written under one roof, and the story of the universal library and its destruction still has the power to move us. But what was the library, and where was it? Did it exist at all? Contemporary descriptions are...

Customer Reviews

5 customer ratings | 5 reviews

Rated 5 stars
A fascinating and rewarding read

I just couldn't put it down. The first chapters are puzzling and one wonders why Canfora chose this unusual structure for his book. But like a suspense writer, he gives the reader one clue after an other and suddenly everything makes sense. In retrospect one even beliefs that this study could not have been written in a more succinct and lucid way. I finished the 200 pages in five hours and felt like I had read a whole library...

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Rated 4 stars
Outstanding Introduction to the Great Library

Almost certainly, no other ancient institution has caught the modern imagination so much as has The Library of Alexandria. Begun around 300BC, this remarkable establishment became _the_ center of learning and scholarship in the Mediterranean world for hundreds of years thereafter. Our debt to the great library is incalculable; to it we owe the Septuagint (the Greek translations of the Old Testament), the standardization...

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Rated 4 stars
One thousand years as a temple of learning and wisdom

I found this book both informative, as well as, a joy to read. That is because most of it reads more like a novel than a formal academic study. This is done to put the reader into the overall cultural mindset of Alexandria and the library at various points in it's almost 1000 year history.Having done my own research on this topic in college I can vouch for the accuracy and completeness of the author's research. The truth is...

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Rated 5 stars
a scholar's treat

This is not a work for the person who likes watered-down beer. It is a critical examination of some aspects of the history of the Library of Alexandria, its strengths and weaknesses, its destruction, its relation to other libraries in Egypt and beyond. Along the way, Canfora offers a solution to the riddle of the library of Ramses II, and he roughs up some historians who badly need it -- like Diodorus Siculus and Gibbon,...

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Rated 5 stars
A thoroughly enjoyable read.

From the beginning of this book, we are treated to historical references [in order of their occurrance] to the famous Library at Alexandria, with an eye toward clearing up the fundamental mysteries surrounding it: where was the Library located? What was its place in ancient culture? And, finally, when and how many times was it really destroyed?An enjoyable and profound read, part history, part mystery; a refreshing change...

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