Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” ( New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library-and if so, who?
By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” ( The Washington Post). Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” ( USA TODAY)-a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. Give yourself the treat of buying and reading this book. I read and reread her prologue and last chapter, they were so moving. Orlean, known for her skill with non fiction subjects, gives us a compelling story including wonderful Library characters, unknown processes of a Library, and a most interesting history of LA. This is a beautifully written ode to libraries wrapped around the true unsolved mystery of who set the devastating 1986 LA Central Library fire. A current librarian quotes Albert Schweitzer and this important message "All true living takes place face to face." Highly recommended!
Her reassuring message throughout the book is that libraries are thriving despite (or maybe because of) the dual pressures of the digital age and the rise in homelessness. Orlean uses the fire as a springboard to spin portraits of a variety of fascinating personalities and extended discourses on such unrelated topics as the birth of the city of Los Angeles and the difficulties of arson investigation. In 1986, a massive fire at the Los Angeles Public Library was obscured in the national media by the concurrent Chernobyl disaster.
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