A 62 pound "velvet and marble" book would be pretty tough to burn, not that you should ever to burn a book, much less a $100,000 book on Michelangelo.
"I love books," Marilena Ferrari, the Italian publisher who produced the extravagance, said in a telephone interview from Bologna, Italy, where she's president of a company called FMR, which publishes fine books about art.
"Books are being destroyed by the Internet, they're losing their identity — it's the modern, Internet version of burning books," she said. "Today, things last so little before they disappear. "
Most expensive new book arrives in NY from Italy - Yahoo! News
UNESCO tracks the number of books published per year per country to measure "an important index of standard of living and education, and of the country's self-awareness."
It looks like Harry Potter has the US beat, in 2005 at least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year
If they included e-books or blogs in their count what would change?
