What makes Emerson's claim unsettling is that he refuses to separate *kinds* of knowledge—the useful sort from the merely beautiful or abstract. When you learn the history of a forgotten civilization, or understand why a friend betrays you repeatedly, or grasp the mechanics of your own fear, you've gained something that shifts how you move through the world, whether you recognize it as power or not. A person who reads widely becomes harder to manipulate, more capable of finding unexpected solutions, more aware of their own blind spots. That's why totalitarian regimes burn books—they understand that Emerson was not being poetic but literal.