Posts by Jack Sherefkin

In the early eighties, rare book librarian John Rathe pulled down a dusty box, wrapped in twine, from a remote corner of the Rare Book room. Attached to the box was a label that said: "Do not open until war is over." Which war? The Civil War? The War of 1812? What he discovered was a box filled with disguised anti-Nazi tracts hidden in packets of tea and shampoo and concealed in miniature books both popular and scholarly.

Literacy is good, illiteracy is bad. Literacy is the foundation of civilization and culture. Who doubts it? History, however, tells another story. The Incas, for example, were not literate, yet had a sophisticated culture.1 Instead of writing, they used a system of knotted cords called quipus to store information and send messages. When literacy came to the Greeks, it did not create a culture, rather, it put into writing a pre-existing culture. The main aspects of classical Greek culture — its architecture and poetry (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were originally oral compositions), political structure, and the