ExcellentTracks the history of that greatest of all cultural institutions The Washington PostLibraries are much more than mere collections of volumes The best are magical fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve Some still exist today some are lost like those of Herculaneum and Alexandria some have been sold or dispersed and some never existed such as those libraries imagined by JRR Tolkien Umberto Eco and Jorge Luis Borges among others Ancient libraries grand baroque libraries scientific libraries memorial libraries personal libraries clandestine libraries Stuart Kells tells the stories of their creators their prizes their secrets and their fate To research this book Kells traveled around the world with his young family like modernday Library Tourists Kells discovered that all the worlds libraries are connected in beautiful and complex ways that in the history of libraries fascinating patterns are created and repeated over