Library: An Unquiet History

Slight, meandering look at libraries, not a true history, more a series of vignettes that Battle weaves into a story of what libraries do, did do, should do, or could do.

Mr Battles's "Library" is not a study for scholars but for general readers who will be charmed by its old-fashioned character, by the elegant prose of its sentences and paragraphs and by its human portrait of libraries. The recording and transmission of knowledge from generation to generation is one of the greatest achievements of mankind and libraries play a crucial role in this process. And it is certainly disquieting to learn about the destruction of millions of books by the Nazis in the Louvain library or the siege of the Boston National and University Library but then Mr Battles reassures the reader by focussing on the building of outstanding collections and on the central role of libraries in every society. Who would have thought that the books in the infamous "model Jewish city" at the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Final Solution "cast the ghetto reader into bibliopsychological relief"?
An excellent study which will delight all those who appreciate books. And the next time we enter a library, we should keep in mind that "readers read books; librarians read readers"!

It is an entertaining and educational book. I was very surprised when I learned that, in ancient times, any book brought to Alexandria was confiscated to be duplicated. I guess since the beginning of time knowledge is assumed to be power.

One complaint is that the first chapter does not belong to the book. It is an incoherent collage of trivia. One should read it at the end. It is unfortunate that the beginning chapter of the book induces such distaste that I almost gave up on the book. Surprisingly, from chapter two on, it picks up and becomes an excellent read.

Battle has written a book about libraries -so, about books put toguether and creating a new, chemical reaction- that has a non very common feature in this class of books: direction. Most of the books about books or related issues tends to be just catalogues of anecdotes, information, curiosities and sometimes even trivia. That's not bad. It can be very entertainning. But Battle has done more than that. With an excellent sense of style and elegance, -but also with a very hidden sense of humor titilating almost out of sight here and there- always sugestive and often very penetrating, he offer a clear vision not just of histories about libraries, but the History about relationships between the Library as institution and the ideas about it that have been developped in different phases of cultural history. The multifacetic substance of the library is presented, then, as never before and in no way just in the stratosphere of theory and speculation, but taking the reader to specific places and libraries, people and events, tragedies and personalities, bookmen and burning books-men.
Great reading.

Being a library science graduate student, I was eager to read this book, thinking it would be an inspiring trip through the ages regarding my chosen field, so I was somewhat disappointed by what I found to be fairly dry reading. The history aspect is indeed there and the text is clearly well-researched, but the inspiration is lacking, unfortunately.

The tone of the author is very subdued and rather droning, which makes for somewhat dull reading in my opinion; I had hoped for a more proactive voice but Battles just doesn't seem very excited about his subject and thus the book sometimes comes across like an intelligent but uninspired history textbook. However, it would serve as a decent reference book for students of this field; I myself was able to use some of its material as a resource in a paper for one of my library science classes.

Ironically, I wish I'd checked this one out of the library instead of purchasing it.