The world today is built upon a nearly incomprehensible amount of understanding that has actually been passed down in books.
It is essential to remember that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, just because the huge bulk of people might not read, indicating that many books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a short boom during the classical period of antiquity, the amount of literate individuals dropped considerably during the Middle Ages. Books became uncommon treasures, with monks meticulously copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were a few of the only members of the populace who were able to read or write. They were the expert keepers of knowledge like biology and religion that all of us have access to in the contemporary world.
With such a rich history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often easy to forget how incredibly fortunate we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a big proportion of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can easily change the manner in which you look at the world, which has held true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built upon understanding that has been handed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had not been for the books that changed minds throughout the ages.
It can be hard to picture what the world would be like today if the large majority of people were unable to read, but for the large bulk of history the vast majority of individuals could not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the invention of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books far more accessible. Obviously, it was still just really the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, however it enabled a whole host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are fortunate to be able to simply log onto a website like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and quickly access the totality of human understanding.