Jeffrey Ann Goudie, Minneapolis Star Tribune This is an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories.”
Michael Lewis, New York Times Book Review, Cover Review You really never know how seriously interesting a subject might be until such a person takes a serious interest in it.” Once again, she’s demonstrated that the feelings of a writer, if that writer is sufficiently talented and her feelings sufficiently strong, can supply her own drama. Susan Orlean has once again found rich material where no one else has bothered to look for it. Sue Halpern, The New York Review of Books “ loving encomium to libraries everywhere.” It’s also a history of libraries, and of a particular library, as well as the personal story of Orlean and her mother, who was losing her memory to dementia while Orlean was retrieving her own memories by writing this book.” The Library Book is about the fire and the mystery of how it started-but in some ways that’s the least of it. Her depiction of the Central Library fire on April 29, 1986, is so rich with specifics that it’s like a blast of heat erupting from the page. What makes The Library Book so enjoyable is the sense of discovery that propels it, the buoyancy when Orlean is surprised or moved by what she finds. A loving tribute not just to a place or an institution but to an idea. “Exquisitely written, consistently entertaining. Orlean has created a book as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library.” With her signature wit, insight, compassion and talent for deep research, she investigates the legendary Los Angeles Public Library fire to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives, and reveals how these buildings provide much more than just books and are needed now more than ever. Weaving her life-long love of books and reading with the fascinating history of libraries and the sometimes-eccentric characters who run them, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Orlean presents a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling story. The mystery remains: did someone purposefully set fire to the library-and if so, who? It was the largest library fire in the history of the United States: it destroyed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more, and shut the library down for seven years. Raging through the stacks, the fire reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library.
Susan Orlean re-opens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling homage to a beloved institution – our libraries.
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