Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a terrific book, Susan Orlean at her considerable best. Her only peer for nonfiction is John McPhee, in my opinion. If you are a reader, you probably already have a profound attachment to and curiosity about libraries and librarians. Orlean's book will satisfy your curiosity and reaffirm your attachment. This book has her signature combination of threads that add up to a whole: we hear about the horrendous fire at the LA main library, we trace the early history of the library and its colorful head librarians, we hear about the issues that face libraries today (homeless users) and we hear about the puzzling self-contradictory man who was accused of but probably did not start the library fire. Orleans knows that people like to read about other interestisng people, so she switches among library staff, the arson suspect and his family, and current library staff. She also knows that people like to get the inside story about institutions and places we mostly see from the outside as customers or users. So we get plenty of both. Sure you probably knew that being able to reserve books over the Internet vastly increased the resources devoted to shipping books from branch to branch, but Orlean makes it concrete by visiting the LA library shipping facility. And so on. As with Orlean, there's not a word out of place or a non-telling detail. So if you care about libraries at all, this is the book for you. Perhaps introducing each chapter with a few catalog entries (I almost said catalog cards, but there are no such things any more) is a bit cute, but it doesn't really get in the way. And if you thought her previous book about Rin Tin Tin wasn't up to her best, don't worry. This one definitely is.