Amazon.com description: Product Description: This work is the third part in an important, five-volume series addressing the unique role libraries have played in building and preserving Western culture. Mr. Staikos has become one of our foremost scholars on library history, writing such books as this as well as works like ""The Great Libraries,"" a classic in its field. This third volume spans a period of more than a thousand years and covers an area stretching from Alexandria and Trebizond to Calabria and Sicily in the south of Italy. The author explores the end of the ancient world and the closure and destruction of its monumental libraries, and describes the formation, of the great monastic libraries, such as St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai, the Monastery of Studius in Constantinople, the group of monasteries on Mount Athos and the famous library in the Monastery of St. John on Patmos. Finally, he examines all the known palace, public, university and private libraries in the whole of the Byzantine Empire, and discusses the booktrade as well.