Civilization is the manner in which people interact over long periods of time. It's like climate -- a moving average. I don't think collecting books on farming

Civilization is the manner in which people interact over long periods of time. It's like climate -- a moving average. I don't think collecting books on farming or how to build a telegraph is going to do much in the way of instructing folks how to create a civilization. Sure, it might give them the technical details of how to do stuff, perhaps very important and utilitarian stuff like purify water, but a civilization does not spring from a collection of gadgets. Put a different way, for the Romans it wasn't the fact that they could re-channel rivers, build great stadiums, or maintain public roads that made them civilized. It was the fact that over long periods of time being a Roman carried with it special privileges and obligations. Being a Roman meant something. There were shared values and ways of doing things. These shared values and ways of doing things _led_ to all that other stuff, not the other way around. So a manual of civilization, to the degree one could be constructed, would be about priorities, principles, and attitudes. Not how to build a better spinning wheel.