First edition. Matthew Battles works at the Houghton Library, the rare books library at Harvard University, and is a contributor to Harper's. This book is about the preservation and destruction of libraries throughout history from the clay-tablet collection of ancient Mesopotamia to the Information Age and the internet. Battles explores now, through its many changes, the library has served two contradictory impulses: to exalt canons of literature and secure and worship the most valuable works and also to contain and control all forms of human knowledge.