Free to All
Free to All

Author: Abigail A. Van Slyck

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-07-20

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780226850320

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Familiar landmarks in hundreds of American towns, Carnegie libraries have shaped the public library experience of generations of Americans and today seen far from controversial. In Free to All, however, Abigail Van Slyck shows that the classical facades and symmetrical plans of these buildings often mask the complex and contentious circumstances of their construction and use.

The Book on the Bookshelf
The Book on the Bookshelf

Author: Henry Petroski

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0307773280

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From the author of the highly praised The Pencil and The Evolution of Useful Things comes another captivating history of the seemingly mundane: the book and its storage. Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didn't. As a result, readers are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress. Unimpeachably researched, enviably written, and charmed with anecdotes from Seneca to Samuel Pepys to a nineteenth-century bibliophile who had to climb over his books to get into bed, The Book on the Bookshelf is indispensable for anyone who loves books.