The Memory of Mankind is an illustrated history of the unique role libraries have played in the history of civilzation. Don Heinrich Tolzmann took the classic German-language work The History of Libraires by Alfred Hessel (published 1925 and translated by Reuben Peiss in 1950) and expanded it with additional text to cover the important past 75 years. Tolzmann also completely rewrote the first chapter due to the discovery of many clay tablet libraries in the ancient Middle East, thus expanding our library history knowledge back 5,000 years.