Volume 48, Number 7 · April 26, 2001
The Great Book Massacre
By Robert Darnton
Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
Nicholson Baker
Random House, 370 pp., $25.95
When journalists discuss their craft, they invoke contradictory clichés: 'Today's newspaper is the first draft of history,' and 'Nothing is more dead than yesterday's newspaper.' Both in a way are true. News feeds history with facts, yet most of it is forgotten. Suppose newspapers disappeared from libraries: Would history vanish from the collective memory? That is the disaster that Nicholson Baker denounces in his latest book, a J'accuse pointed at the library profession.
Review, 6103 words
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