Saving science and scholarship from marauders
I just finished Joshua Hammer's _Bad-Ass Librarians_. It recounts the complex and dangerous effort to gather hundreds of thousands of handwritten manuscripts from private homes around #Timbuktu, where they were under assault from rot and termites, to collect and repair them in the Ahmed Baba Institute (in Timbuktu, funded by Kuwait), to evacuate them surreptitiously to prevent their destruction by #AlQuaeda in their 2012-2013 invasion of northern #Mali, and finally to ensure their safe return to Institute. Plus, great title.
Recommended, partly for the history (new to me) of the medieval golden age of #Muslim science and scholarship in northwest #Africa, centered in Timbuktu, and partly for the example of a small band of Malian librarians to save their cultural heritage.
Of course there are also ominous similarities to current news.