The world today is built on a practically incomprehensible quantity of knowledge that has been handed down in books.
It can be difficult to imagine what the world would resemble today if the huge majority of people were unable to read, but for the large majority of history the vast bulk of people could not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the development of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more available. Naturally, it was still only really the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, but it made it possible for a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky to be able to merely log onto a website like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily gain access to the totality of human knowledge.
With such an abundant history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how exceptionally 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 huge percentage of all the books that have ever been composed (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can easily alter the way that you take a look at the world, which has held true throughout all of history also. The modern world is built on knowledge that has been handed down through books, whether that is philosophy, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had actually not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.
It's important to keep in mind that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humankind's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, simply due to the fact that the vast bulk of people could not read, suggesting that many books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a short boom throughout the classical era of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped significantly throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving traditional texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and faith that we all have access to in the contemporary world.