Groucho Marx once said, \u201cOutside of a dog, the book is a man\u2019s best friend.\u00a0 Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.\u201d\u00a0 Books, or written communication of some sort, essentially make the world go around.\u00a0 They are the stuff of big ideas, paradigm shifts, and the basic core of life.\u00a0 Whether story, non-fiction, or scientific, in our modern world\u2026 the written word, and by extension its most common form, books, create the basis of Western culture and society.\u00a0 Even if we go back before the time of writing, narratives and stories were the common form of communicating ideas, if not paintings on the walls of caves.<\/p>\n
Thusly, Melvyn Bragg makes the case for the twelve most important books in Western culture in his text, 12 Books That Changed the World<\/em>.\u00a0 Of course, any such list is going to be open to a fair amount of criticism and pot shots.\u00a0 So Bragg\u2019s exercise is purposely and consciously aware of its limitations in choosing to focus on Western progress and then especially England\u2019s particular contribution.\u00a0 Jolly good stuff, and all that.\u00a0 Probably a wider scope would be near impossible.\u00a0 You\u2019d have a pretty hard time not hitting your limit of 12 by 1000 AD, what with Plato, the Bible, the Koran, and Augustine.\u00a0 Certainly, there is some important stuff here in Bragg\u2019s tome.\u00a0 Darwin\u2019s On The Origin of Species<\/em> still sends shudders through scientific, philosophical, theological, and religious non overlapping magisteria<\/em>. Moreover, Bragg covers all his bases, from science to major advances in human rights, to sports, and even the beauty of literature found in Shakespeare\u2019s First Folio<\/em>, which lucky for Bragg contains some of the greatest literary works of drama, comedy and tragedy all rolled into one.<\/p>\n Humans have a strong need to communicate, to tell stories, and even to write down rules and laws.\u00a0 Last September, on a trip to the British Museum I lined up and patiently waited to catch a glimpse of the Rosetta Stone.\u00a0 Why would anyone want to look at an old stone with some indecipherable writing on it?\u00a0 Well for one, by looking back at how previous generations communicated and thought, we come to a greater understanding of who we are and where we came from.\u00a0 It ties us all back into the grand stream of humanity.\u00a0 That is what books do, they propel us forward, opening up new horizons and creating new possibilities, while also becoming a recollection of what was, and how things were.\u00a0 It is simply amazing that in early June the world will celebrate the most watched sporting event in history, that traces its global reach to a simple codification of rules in 1863.\u00a0 Shakespeare himself could not have envisioned how such a low class game could become the sport of kings, as he derogatorily quipped: \u201cNor tripped neither, you base football player (from King Lear<\/em>).\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, in my D.Min. studies we have been talking about media and its effects on culture and history.\u00a0 Bragg\u2019s point is that books matter, or more to the point, the written word expresses new ideas which can drastically alter the course of history.\u00a0 This is not mere hyperbole, men and women create ideas, stories, and beauty that create paradigm shifts.\u00a0 With that in mind here are the 12 books that changed my life.<\/p>\n There are probably 15-20 other books that could make this list for me.<\/p>\n What are the books that have changed your life?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Groucho Marx once said, \u201cOutside of a dog, the book is a man\u2019s best friend.\u00a0 Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.\u201d\u00a0 Books, or written communication of some sort, essentially make the world go around.\u00a0 They are the stuff of big ideas, paradigm shifts, and the basic core of life.\u00a0 Whether story, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,66,2,74],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-bragg","tag-dminlgp","tag-groucho-marx","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1483,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n