Save a book from the fires of hell!

July 29, 2009 3:34 PM

It's the end of the world and you have time to save one book. Which one will you save?

If I were to assemble an "End of the World" library, I'd like to know what sorts of things I should add to it to represent the interests and knowlege of a wide variety of people, rather than just myself. Is it a book that will feed your mind over the weeks and years to come or a book that will save a fragile remenant of human knowledge. Will your book teach future generations about what life was like before the collapse or will it show them how to survive in a blighted world?

Do tell.

posted by talkingmuffin to writing & language (31 comments total)

As long as it doesn't have to be one volume, I would save an Encyclopedia Britannica.

Or, if at all possible, obtain a printout of every single Wikipedia page. Not quite a book, but I imagine it would be pretty helpful.

Although now that I think about it... Depending on the specific nature of our downfall, I might go with The Zombie Survival Guide.
posted by dondiego87 at 4:23 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

I'm not at all religious, but in an actual Armageddon scenario I might revise my belief system. :)

Therefore I'd vote for a religious text like the Koran or the Bible, or something similarly filled with wisdom and mystery, and potentially-- comfort. If nothing else, you could live out the rest of your life trying to decipher the "true meaning" of the lessons of this kind of book.
posted by np312 at 4:36 PM on July 29

I'm tempted to say a KJV Bible, even though I'm no Christian, but then I imagine a future with no religion and I'm happier.

So let's skip that and take the next-best thing: the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which is pretty much everything you ever need to know about human nature.
posted by rokusan at 4:40 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

Chatfilter, by talkingmuffin

either that or A Thousand Plateaus, by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:43 PM on July 29

If you're talking about valuable, hard-to-re-discover knowledge, then pick a good Physics textbook.

For literature, Catch-22. It will make them laugh and teach them what to try and avoid when re-creating human institutions.
posted by jsonic at 4:46 PM on July 29

For me, personally, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Every time I reread it I am reminded of people's humanity in times of struggle, so that might be important.

For society as a whole, well. Something about how to grow food, I think.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 4:57 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

The OED, so I at least had the words to describe the past and future.

This question's a tad chat-filtery, tbh.
posted by goo at 4:59 PM on July 29

The book of love, of course.
posted by Sully at 5:14 PM on July 29

How Things Work.
posted by musofire at 5:14 PM on July 29

The Feynman lectures on physics.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 5:24 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

musofire is close, but I'd actually recommend The New Way Things Work since it has been updated with even more modern tech.

Anything else is selfish and self-indulgent.
posted by Justinian at 5:57 PM on July 29 [2 favorites]

To be totally honest, if it were to be only one book, all illusions of intellectualism etc. aside, it would be Anne of Green Gables.
posted by carmen at 6:30 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

Rubber Bible.
posted by Mitheral at 6:36 PM on July 29

End of the world means why bother saving anything? But I take your point.

Do we assume other people have the same chance? If so, gonna be a whole mess of Bibles, Torahs, Korans, Shakespeares and OEDs out there.

Put that way, it becomes a more interesting question, almost game theoryish. What can I add to the mix that no one else will have thought of and that others might actually thank me for?

Answer would change from year to year, I'm afraid. Probably grab a few Loebs for posterity. Probably overlap someone, but what the hell- we've lost so much from those days as it is, kind of owe to them to keep those particular lamps lit bit longer
posted by IndigoJones at 6:44 PM on July 29

The S.A.S Survival Manual. Hands down
posted by Redhush at 7:18 PM on July 29

Since Redhush beat me to my first choice, I shall bring my thick A World History of Art.
posted by b33j at 7:23 PM on July 29

The Sheep Lok Up by John Brunner
posted by nj_subgenius at 7:26 PM on July 29

lok=look
posted by nj_subgenius at 7:27 PM on July 29

The Whole Earth Catalog, partly to indulge myself and partly to preserve some of mankind's knowledge. The OED is a great choice too!
posted by cmchap at 8:13 PM on July 29

I would be totally selfish and choose "1984" by Orwell, if for no other reason than I could read that book over and over and over again.
posted by ThaBombShelterSmith at 8:40 PM on July 29

Tortilla Flat by Steinbeck, same reason. It has everything, romance, adventure, friendship, wisdom, humor and death. And I can read it over and over again.
posted by Locochona at 8:56 PM on July 29

If we survive, we have to eat, right? So I'd save my old Joy of Cooking. Then I'd cook y'all dinner and you could lend me your books to read after.
posted by zinfandel at 10:14 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

"If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
posted by renovatio1 at 12:04 AM on July 30

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
posted by treyka at 1:03 AM on July 30

joseph_gurl: Please don't save Deleuze and Guattari at the apocalypse, please? There has to be one benefit to global armageddon!

As for me, it would be a detailed atlas.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:39 AM on July 30

Withnail and I, which I've plugged previously. It documents the horrors of twentieth century life and demonstrates how to survive once you're relocated to a rural, low-tech environment. I am only slightly joking here.
posted by permafrost at 3:47 AM on July 30

ThaBombShelterSmith, Amazon will only zap it off your Kindle once the magma cools.

Instead, a cheap paperback copy of "Three men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome is the obvious pick. For people picking through the ruins of civilzation or deciding who to eat next, a little light reading will really ease their burdens.

(Yeah, on second thought, this is a bit Chatty for me, and I have never thought that before. Cool thought experiment, though!)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:31 AM on July 30

I came in to vote for Catch-22, but jsonic beat me to it.

Otherwise, Through the Looking Glass. It never gets old for me, plus it has those wonderful Tenniel illustrations. Come to think of it, I might want the annotated version.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 7:11 AM on July 30

Obviously I don't give a shit if my choice serves the future world. As far as I am concerned, I'd re-make the entire planet over to be like Wonderland anyway. I mean, as long as we're blue-skying.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 7:13 AM on July 30

> The OED, so I at least had the words to describe the past and future.

This question's a tad chat-filtery, tbh.

Yes and yes.
posted by languagehat at 9:31 AM on July 30

Complete Works of Shakespeare. It's an incomparable manual for how to live, love, and think.

Plus, Shakespeare knows more than anyone else about kingship, politics and the consequences of strength, weakness, recklessness, irresolution, empathy and its lack in a monarch or governing figure, so whoever's running the reconstructed society would do well to check him out.
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:24 PM on August 9