Rebecca Knuth - Libricide. The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century [2003][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: July 30, 2003 | ISBN-10: 027598088X | ISBN-13: 978-0275980887 | Edition: annotated edition
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings, declared German poet Heinrich Heine. This book identifies the regime-sponsored, ideologically driven, and systemic destruction of books and libraries in the 20th century that often served as a prelude or accompaniment to the massive human tragedies that have characterized a most violent century. Using case studies of libricide committed by Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Kuwait, Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and Chinese Communists in Tibet, Knuth argues that the destruction of books and libraries by authoritarian regimes was sparked by the same impulses toward negation that provoked acts of genocide or ethnocide.
Readers will learn why some people—even those not subject to authoritarian regimes—consider the destruction of books a positive process. Knuth promotes understanding of the reasons behind extremism and patterns of cultural terrorism, and concludes that what is at stake with libricide is nothing less than the preservation and continuation of the common cultural heritage of the world. Anyone committed to freedom of expression and humanistic values will embrace this passionate and valuable book.

Editorial Review
From Publishers Weekly
Lurking behind the academic prose of this historical survey is a compelling, provocative analysis of "libricide," the systematic destruction or robbery of books and other cultural artifacts as part of an ideological campaign against a group or nation. Focusing on five case studies-Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait, China and Tibet-Knuth, a professor of library and information science at the University of Hawaii, argues that libricide often coincides with, or even precedes, genocide. The earliest modern example of such a pattern occurred in Germany, where the Nazi regime "purified" national libraries of Jewish content and selectively "looted, destroyed, and pulped" libraries of German-occupied countries as part of their program to create a homogenized, Aryan state. Similarly, during Hussein's six-month occupation of Kuwait in 1989-90, Iraqis destroyed 43% of the book stocks in school libraries even as they subjected the resident population to "the horrors of torture, rape, and summary execution." The Serbs, Knuth documents, destroyed a good part of the cultural heritage of Bosnian Moslems, Croats, and Slovenes; the Chinese conducted not only the appalling Cultural Revolution, but also the near obliteration of traditional Tibetan culture. The opening three chapters of this book, which offer a theoretical framework for the libricide-genocide connection, and the conclusion, which sets Knuth's argument in context of other genocide studies, are written in a much drier, more academic style than the five case histories. However, Knuth's argument is powerfully drawn and deserves a wider audience than the scholarly and library professional readership for which it seems rather clearly intended.

Review
"Knuth expertly straddles the disciplines of political history, political philosophy, sociology and of course, library and information science, to deliver a piece of work that would be of interest to students and scholars rooted in any of these aforementioned disciplines....[a] truly indispensable resource. Not only is Libricide indispenable, it is seminal."-Library Review

Book Description II
Knuth examines ideologically driven and systemic destruction of books and libraries that paralleled acts of genocide in the 20th century.