Following up on Library: An Unquiet History is another book by the man whose job I want most (that is a librarian who gets to write books about libraries). While a bit uneven, I learned a lot about the library "across the river" where most of the books I provide for customers on interlibrary loan come from. Most interesting are the stories of the immigrant boys who ran amok in the stacks as pages and the immigrant men who managed the stacks a la Mark Blumberg on a grander scale. I also found Widener's role in the computerization of libraries interesting. Battles descriptive writing about computers naturally grew into libraries is particularly distinguished:

"Soon came the computers themselves, which would each year henceforward appear in new configurations, in new patterns and places. The iridescence of a screen suddenly would bloom among the dim lamps of the Reading Room; soon, whole tables were given over to them, where they sat glaring at each other across empty Windsor chairs. In the stacks, they would sprout here and there -- behind an elevator, perhaps, or on a table near a window -- each generation featuring a throbbing new graphic or dizzying screen-saver that would oscillate in the calm among the bookshelves. And suddenly they were ubiquitous -- like vases of flowers, or typewriters, or carrousels of ink stamps, they took their place among the commonplace furniture of the library." p. 162-63

This is but a breezy picture book alas, and it has left me longing for more. ( )