A meditation on the way libraries and books have shaped life and history.
 
Words, Books, and the Spaces They Inhabit is the first of Mari Shaw's series on The Noble Art of Collecting. With examples of unexpected collectors and serendipitous outcomes, Shaw investigates the obscure desires that shape art collecting and the public goodwill that results from it. What was lost when the scrolls in the ancient library of Alexandria were destroyed? How did Catherine the Great's collecting change the way we think? How did Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Catherine the Great expand our appreciation of books as objects? History has been created, recorded, and preserved in writing. This book includes chapters on contemporary artists Paul Cham, Rosa Varva, Joseph Kosuth, Carl Andre (with text by Anthony Allen), Ulises Carrión, and William Shakespeare. Words and the spaces that contain them are crucial to an empathetic understanding of our world.