The map of knowledge : a thousand-year history of how classical ideas were lost and found
(Book)

"Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, and subsequently published in hardcover in the United States, by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2019"--Colophon.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-290) and index.

"After the fall of Rome, as civilization collapsed and libraries burned, ancient knowledge that would eventuall fuel the Renaissance was at risk of being lost. This thrilling history tracks three crucial books as they were passed hand to hand through seven cities during a perilous thousand-year journey of survival. After the great library at Alexandria was destroyed, Baghdad, Córdoba, Toledo, Salerno, and Palermo were rare outposts of knowledge in a dark world, places where scholars collected, translated, and shared texts. Violet Moller's The Map of Knowledge takes us into the sparkling intellectual life that flourished there, highlighting the crucial rold played by Arab scholars in improving the cornerstone ideas of Western thought. She shows us how foundational works on math, astronomy, and medicine by Euclid, Ptolemy, and Galen eventually reached Venice, the major center of scientific printing, where their legacy was assured--having been rescued by the passionate curiosity of generations of readers."--Back cover.