The world today is built on an almost incomprehensible quantity of knowledge that has been handed down in books.
It is very important to remember that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. Most stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely because the huge majority of people might not read, implying that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a quick boom during the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped drastically during the Middle Ages. Books became uncommon treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the enduring classic texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were a few of the only members of the population who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of understanding like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern-day world.
With such a rich 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 actually ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the manner in which you look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history too. The modern world is built upon understanding that has actually been passed down through books, whether that is philosophy, 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 throughout the ages.
It can be tough to imagine what the world would be like today if the large bulk 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 much more available. Naturally, it was still just really the richest and well-read 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 happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to merely log onto a site 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.