Why Books? (2010)

YouTube may not have been the decisive factor. Long before the advent of our satured world of media intensities -- of iPods supplying perpetual life soundtracks and Twitter beaming the world's mental burps into our phones -- the book had faced its skeptics. "I hate books," wrote famously the tutor of Émile. "They teach us only to speak," he continued, "of what we do not know." Little could he have imagined that a mere two centuries later, sçavans across the globe would be rushing to the defense of books in a new age of visual and digital proliferation. Whether economic, technical, pedagogical, cultural, or social, the question "Why books?" thus has a long history -- one towards the end of which our time has perhaps only begun to arrive.

Learn about Radcliffe's "Why Books?" conference, held on October 28-29, 2010 by exploring the links. Materials include summaries of visits to key centers of bookishness at Harvard, as well as videos and résumés of talks and discussions.