Bibliophobia
The End and the Beginning of the Book
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Bibliophobia
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Narrated by:
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Tom Perkins
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By:
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Brian Cummings
About this listen
Bibliophobia is a book about material books, how they are cared for, and how they are damaged, throughout the 5,000-year history of writing from Sumeria to the smartphone.
Bibliophobia is a global history, covering six continents and seven religions, describing written examples from each of the last thirty centuries (and several earlier). It discusses topics such as the origins of different kinds of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and artificial intelligence; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy relics, talismans, or shrines; and the place of literacy in the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution. It proposes a theory of writing, how it relates to speech, images, and information, or to concepts of mimesis, personhood, and politics.
Originating as the Clarendon Lectures in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, the methods of Bibliophobia range across book history; comparative religion; philosophy from Plato to Hegel and Freud; and a range of global literature from ancient to contemporary. Its inspiration is the power that books always (and continue to) have in the emotional, spiritual, bodily, and imaginative lives of readers.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 103
On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Philosophy of Modernity
- By Roger on 06-17-09
By: Russell Shorto
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God's Jury
- The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Cullen Murphy
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 94
The Inquisition conducted its last execution in 1826-the victim was a Spanish schoolmaster convicted of heresy. But as Cullen Murphy shows in this provocative new work, not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, in the modern world its spirit is more influential than ever.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A balanced review based on new material
- By Sean on 05-15-12
By: Cullen Murphy
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Whose Bible Is It?
- A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages
- By: Jaroslav Pelikan
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4 out of 5 stars 58
Winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, Jaroslav Pelikan is Professor Emeritus of history at Yale University and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This examination of the history of the Bible reflects half a century of study and research by the author. In Whose Bible Is It?, Pelikan traces the transformation of the Bible from its earliest oral traditions to its modern forms.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Too Verbose Not Enough "Big Picture" Bible History
- By Stephen on 07-05-11
By: Jaroslav Pelikan
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Hitler Homer Bible Christ
- The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013
- By: Richard Carrier
- Narrated by: Richard Carrier
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 133
Richard Carrier, Ph.D., philosopher, historian, blogger, has published a number of papers in the field of ancient history and biblical studies. He has also written several books and chapters on diverse subjects, and has been blogging and speaking since 2006. He is known the world over for all the above. But here, together for the first time, are all of Dr. Carrier's peer reviewed academic journal articles in history through the year 2013, collected with his best magazine articles, research papers, and blog posts on the same subjects.
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3 out of 5 stars
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"Call Me Underwhelmed"
- By Ray M on 09-12-16
By: Richard Carrier
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The Written World
- The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization
- By: Martin Puchner
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores 16 foundational texts selected from more than 4,000 years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched generations and changed the course of history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful and illuminating!
- By Gloria J. Petit-Clair on 12-04-17
By: Martin Puchner
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Da Vinci's Ghost
- Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
- By: Toby Lester
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4 out of 5 stars 151
Toby Lester, author of the award-winning The Fourth Part of the World, masterfully crafts yet another century-spanning saga of people and ideas in this epic story of Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and a square. Over time, the nearly 550-year-old ink-on-paper sketch has transformed into a collective symbol of the nature of genius, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human spirit.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Haunting Expierience
- By Paul on 02-10-12
By: Toby Lester
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Ibn Khaldun
- An Intellectual Biography
- By: Robert Irwin
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Issues with accuracy, pronounciation
- By Moh 3aly on 01-02-19
By: Robert Irwin
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The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
- The Conflict Between Word and Image
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 24 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
Who changed the sex of God? This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Can't Even Get Started
- By Marie on 02-08-19
By: Leonard Shlain
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Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
- By: Christopher de Hamel
- Narrated by: Christopher de Hamel
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature. The idea for this book, which is entirely new, is to invite the listener into an intimate conversation with a selection of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to let each of those manuscripts illuminate the Middle Ages and sometimes the modern world too.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I've been waiting a long time for a book like this
- By Robert on 04-15-18
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The Sistine Secrets
- Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican
- By: Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story5 out of 5 stars 34
Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo began work on a painting that became one of the most famous pieces of art in the world - the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Every year millions of people come to see Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest of Christianity's chapels; yet there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well-researched!
- By Natalie K. on 08-28-17
By: Benjamin Blech, and others
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The Apocryphal Gospels
- The History of the New Testament Apocrypha Not Included in the Bible
- By: Charles River Editors, Gustavo Vazquez-Lozano
- Narrated by: Mark Norman
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Between 50 and 90 CE, the various writings that comprise the New Testament were written, including the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, and other letters to more general communities of the early Church. But what is recognized as the 26 books of the New Testament today, in literally hundreds of English translations, actually took several more centuries to be determined as "canonical" by the Church.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Interesting information.
- By KP on 12-11-16
By: Charles River Editors, and others
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 338
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4 out of 5 stars 155
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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William Blake vs the World
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story5 out of 5 stars 83
A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best book ever
- By idamae on 11-04-22
By: John Higgs
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God’s Secretaries
- The Making of the King James Bible
- By: Adam Nicolson
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 301
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 264
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 263
It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment “Englishness” and the English language had come into its first passionate maturity. Boisterous, elegant, subtle, majestic, finely nuanced, sonorous, and musical, the English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own reach and scope than any before or since. It is a form of the language that drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not what I was expecting
- By Greg on 12-29-13
By: Adam Nicolson
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When God Spoke Greek
- The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible
- By: Timothy Michael Law
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
The Septuagint, the name given to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures between the third century BC and the second century AD, played a central role in the Bible's history. Many of the Hebrew scriptures were still evolving when they were translated into Greek, and these Greek translations, along with several new Greek writings, became Holy Scripture in the early Church. Yet gradually the Septuagint lost its place at the heart of Western Christianity.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A popular & much-needed intro to the Septuagint
- By Jacobus on 06-14-14