It was the largest library fire in the history of the United States: it destroyed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more, and shut the library down for seven years. Raging through the stacks, the fire reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. Susan Orlean re-opens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling homage to a beloved institution – our libraries.

The life and times and near-death experience of the Los Angeles Public Library was a story that felt urgent to tell, and gave me a chance to pay tribute to these marvelous places that have been such an essential part of my life. The next thing I knew, I was investigating the largest library fire in the history of the United States. I never stopped loving libraries, but they receded in my mind, and seemed like a piece of my past.Īnd then I started taking my own son to the library, and I was reminded instantly and vividly of how much libraries had meant to me, how formative they were to my love of reading and writing, and how much they mean to us as a culture. The very air in the library seemed charged with possibility and imagination books seem to have their own almost human vitality.But over time, I had become more of a book buyer than a book borrower, and I had begun to forget how magical libraries are. My mother and I would take regular trips to the branch library near my house at least twice a week, and those trips were enchanted.

The library book susan orleans