Review by Booklist Review
Battles, a rare book librarian at Harvard, takes the reader on a world tour of the library from ancient times to the present digital age, making stops in Nineveh and Alexandria, Athens and Baghdad. He considers the book culture and important collections of medieval Europe, which were assembled and maintained by popes and monks, and the founding of the first "public" library--by Cosimo de' Medici in 1444. Among the other "librarians" who capture his interest are classicist Richard Bentley, who in 1694 was appointed Keeper of the Royal Library; Antonio Panizzi, who produced the first catalog of the British Library (the first volume, covering the letter A, took seven years to complete); Melville Dewey, creator of the decimal classification system and founder of the American Library Association; and Herman Kruk, head of the Vilna ghetto library. The book is less a formal history than an exploration of the concept of library and how it evolved. Battles writes in an engaging way, and his book will be appreciated by librarians and book lovers. Mary Ellen Quinn
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Battles, rare books librarian at Houghton Library, Harvard University, has written a somewhat unusual history of libraries, one that focuses not only on the building of libraries but on the burning of books and the subsequent destruction of knowledge that that entails. Many people know about the burning of the library at Alexandria, and maybe one or two other great losses, such as Athens and Nineveh. Bookmaking, book printing, the evolution of the card catalog, the changing job description for librarians, and cataloging classification systems are all touched upon here in a concise, informative manner. From the making of papyrus scrolls to handbound books to the Internet and the present information age, this is a fascinating romp through library stacks. One of the most dramatic instances recounted is the burning of the Bosnian National and University Library at Sarajevo, which was its own example of ethnic cleansing. Grover Gardner provides the perfect British inflection for this type of audiobook and moves the listener through centuries with ease and fluidity. Every library should own this title; highly recommended.--Gloria Maxwell, Penn Valley Community Coll., Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Battles, rare books librarian at Houghton Library, Harvard University, has written a somewhat unusual history of libraries, one that focuses not only on the building of libraries but on the burning of books and the subsequent destruction of knowledge that that entails. Many people know about the burning of the library at Alexandria, and maybe one or two other great losses, such as Athens and Nineveh. Bookmaking, book printing, the evolution of the card catalog, the changing job description for librarians, and cataloging classification systems are all touched upon here in a concise, informative manner. From the making of papyrus scrolls to handbound books to the Internet and the present information age, this is a fascinating romp through library stacks. One of the most dramatic instances recounted is the burning of the Bosnian National and University Library at Sarajevo, which was its own example of ethnic cleansing. Grover Gardner provides the perfect British inflection for this type of audiobook and moves the listener through centuries with ease and fluidity. Every library should own this title; highly recommended. Gloria Maxwell, Penn Valley Community Coll., Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Historical survey by a rare-book librarian of the defining epochs and events leading to both the destruction and proliferation of libraries. Rebutting the stereotype of a silent sanctum in which mousy librarians maintain perfect order, the author reminds us how chaotic and impermanent these repositories of accumulated knowledge are. He contends that a library, "a world, complete and uncompletable," draws its reason for existence from the culture in which it arises, a situation as liable to shifting social currents as the edifice housing it is subject to weather and other disasters, both natural and man-made. Battles follows the notorious "biblioclasms" of past ages, from the burning of the library at Alexandria to the bonfires of the Nazis, who destroyed more than 100 million books. He asserts that "most books are bad, very bad in fact," and bemoans their inability to surmount the babble of their times. He does not, however, suggest that their fates are deserved; rather, that an ironic result of gathering so many volumes in a single place is that it makes them ready targets for revisionist fervor. Many small collections in obscure and scattered locations, on the other hand, ensure that more books will survive the onslaught of marauding princes, vengeful dictators, and fanatical clerics. Among the other ironies the author points out: many of the scrolls in Herculaneum survived the volcano of a.d. 79 because they burned, thereby making the charred remains amenable to spectral photography, which rendered their ancient text visible, while intact scrolls of the same age have long since crumbled into dust. Battles points out that books have always been an ephemeral experience: older manuscripts and proscribed texts were often recycled or reused, the imperfect palimpsests still visible to later readers. Yet he seems to lament the onset of the digital age, with its 800-million-page archive, by attesting that libraries now exist in a "state of flux which is indistinguishable from a state of crisis." A must for every home or institutional collection. (11 illustrations) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
