For as long as we've recorded ideas and information, there have been attempts to control or destroy these records. Today, attacks on knowledge are occurring on an unprecedented scale. In a new book, director of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, Richard Ovenden, traces the 3,000-year journey of knowledge, and the attempts that have been made to both destroy and preserve it. In doing so, he demonstrates the important function that accurate information, and the institutions that house it, play in promoting a healthy society.