This set addresses the unique role libraries have played in building and preserving Western culture. Volume 1 reveals the rich history of the early archive libraries from Crete to the famous library of the Ptolemies in Alexandria. The second volume addresses the unique role libraries have played in building and preserving Western culture and reveals the development of the Roman book tradition built from and with knowledge of the Greek tradition. The origins of Latin literature are described and its impact on Roman cultural life, private libraries, booktrading in the Republic. Other subjects are the establishing of the first public libraris in Rome during the era of emperors and the contacts between emperors and authors. Followed by the history of the libraries in Rome in the first 4 centuries AD and libraries in the rest of Italy and the Roman provinces. Volume 3 spans a period of more than a thousand years and covers an area stretching from Alexandria and Trebizond to Calabria and Sicily in the south of Italy. The author explores the end of the ancient world and the closure and destruction of its monumental libraries, and describes the formation, of the great monastic libraries, such as St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai, the Monastery of Studius in Constantinople, the group of monasteries on Mount Athos and the famous library in the Monastery of St. John on Patmos. Finally, he examines all the known palace, public, university and private libraries in the whole of the Byzantine Empire, and discusses the booktrade as well. Through well-researched text and many full-color illustrations, the author guides his readers over 1800 years of mankind's struggle to preserve his knowledge by the written word. -- Vol. 4. "This fourth volume discusses the publishing procedure for secular and religious writings of late antiquity and the factors that led to the impoverishment of the monumental libraries in Rome. New centers of learning grew up in the monasteries, where great libraries containing educational and instructive books and representative works of Christian literature came into being. Monastic libraries were founded throughout Europe, including the regions with Celtic and Anglo-Saxon populations: those at Monte Cassino, Bobbio, St. Gallen, Fulda, Cluny and elsewhere are dealt with extensively. Mention is also made of the libraries founded in universities and of the new philosophy of forming school libraries, as in Bologna and Paris."--Publisher's website. -- Vol. 5. "In this fifth volume, the author writes about the re-evaluation of the ancient world: this set in motion a quest for the surviving works of ancient Greek and Latin literature, most of which were to be found in monastic libraries. He discusses the new schools and scholarly circles that were formed to promote the spread of Greek and Latin literature, especially philosophical works, and the emergence from them of the first humanistic libraries. He evokes the character of the libraries belonging to patrons of literature and the arts, such as Matthias Corvinus, the Vatican, the Medici family, the Dukes of Urbino and François I, among many others. Finally, there is an excellent treatise and circumstantial account of the invention of printing, which changed the scene as regards the dissemination of books and the formation of libraries in such a way that the world of books during the Renaissance witnessed a return to the state of affairs existing under the Roman emperors from Augustus to Hadrian."--Publisher's website.