“Books serve to show a man that those original
thoughts of his aren't very new at all.”
Abraham Lincoln
“There are worse crimes than burning books.
One of them is not reading them.”
Ray Bradbury
“If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come
there are so many books on how to do it?”
Bette Midler
For all of my life, I have felt a need to be surrounded by books. Some books have remained with me for decades because the mere sight of them on my bookshelf reminds me of the remarkable journey I took within the pages. Others are destined by chapter three to find their way to the pile of books that will be available for adoption by friends, colleagues, or the women’s shelter that has become our family charity. The deciding factor is whether or not the author is able to show me a different way to look at something I’ve seen a thousand times. The authors who go a step further and do it with style and wit go on a special shelf that will be reread.
I came to understand the real power of books when my oldest son was injured by medical malpractice at birth. During the five and a half months that he lived in the neonatal intensive care unit, my husband and I took up residence in a corner of his room. When I realized that the doctors and nurses were speaking a foreign language, I went to the UCLA medical school book store and bought every book that dealt with neonatology and respiratory compromise. The knowledge that I gained from those books enabled me to stop further incidents of malpractice and ultimately discover the real and accurate diagnosis of how my son had been injured.
In a millennial study, it was determined that the most important invention of the past 1,000 years was the Guttenberg press. The invention of movable type enabled information to reach the masses. By the dawn of the 20th century, every mother understood the fact that reading for comprehension offered their children a brighter future.
Articles in this section will focus on ways that the world of publishing influences the flow of information in our modern world.
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