Years ago, I can recall reading William Blades” The Enemies of Books and Holbrook Jackson's The Anatomy of Bibliomania, and thinking how books and libraries seem caught in an eternal cycle of construction and destruction. This principle – obvious enough, when you think about it – comes through as a leitmotiv in this impressionistic and polemic study of libraries across the centuries. Lucien Polastron's book first appeared as Livres en Feu (Editions Denoël, Paris, 2004) when it won the Société des Gens de Lettres Prize for non‐fiction/history. This translation by Jon E. Graham well captures the original mix of scholarly enthusiasm and almost‐journalistic argumentation.
What we have here is a book worth dipping into by scholars and experts, but also a book likely to interest the general reader with an interest in the history of culture, the history of the book and the many ways – in war and peace – that libraries can be born, die and rise again from the ashes like a phoenix. Polastron tries to anticipate caveats from experts by stating, in his acknowledgements, that “touching on all nooks and crannies of history in the attic of every civilization, [the book] runs the risk of attracting the finicky magnifying glass of the experts”: he is right, because this book distils a lot of material from a lot of other writing and research (much of it represented in an interesting, if idiosyncratic, bibliography).
The spread looks impressive, because we start with the cuneiform tablets of Nineveh and, inevitably, Alexandria and the birth of bibliography with Callimachus, leap up through Nero and the Constantinople of 1453, fly through a history of books and libraries under Islam and the caliphates, take a Cook's tour through Chinese history (with side‐glances at India and Japan), and settle in to censorship and monasteries and revolutionary change in the so‐called Christian West. For anyone wanting a snapshot of these periods, there is much here. In addition, Polastron has a conversational tone, loves anecdotes and quotations from contemporary writers (often people with strong views), and, like Neil Acherson in his book about the Black Sea, tries to catch the wider and deeper resonances of history in this way.
It is a piecemeal approach that has a dwarf‐on‐the‐shoulder‐of‐giants impact on the reader, even though it is highly readable in its own right. You race along even if you are not entirely convinced, and you are not entirely convinced because you believe you have not been entirely informed. Sections on, say, Jewish books and libraries, and on Japan, are cursory, and any over‐arching interpretation of, say, the position of books and libraries in the culture of the time (something we expect now from authoritative studies of the history of the book), and any systematic analysis of the factors and forces at work to explain the construction and destruction of books and libraries (other than mere historical description), both are missing. They are both implied and the evidence is enough to base such a historical analysis upon: this is impressionistic history much in need of a coherent historical stance.
It follows, therefore, that the book emerges as something of a hybrid, and certainly a creature in two parts. Let us park the historical scenarios and move on to what is clearly what drove Polastron to write the book in the first place: concern not only for that pendulum‐swing between construction–destruction in libraries in the past, but concern that something is at work still to put books and libraries in real jeopardy. This is the polemic part of the book, almost a Jeremiad in the sense that, like the old prophet, he argues that things are not well. Not only are forces of destruction at work (wars and floods destroy libraries, predatory princes pillage books and libraries from each other, books represent ideas and cultural destruction goes alongside social destruction – think of Louvain in 1914 and 1940, for example, think of libraries in Hitler's Poland and in the Balkans and in Iraq), and books and libraries attract censorship (the Inquisition in Spain, Spanish destruction of Aztec codices, Islamic destruction of Christian texts and the burning of Arab manuscripts at the Escorial).
Not only all this, but even in times of alleged peace there are dangers to books and libraries – the fire of London, an earthquake shaking Stanford University library, a flood in Florence in 1966 and unexpected arson in libraries in Lyon in 1999. Polastron builds up his case – not all modern(ist) library designs are sympathetic, all too many libraries weed out (and even sell or throw away) books of value (he cites the British Library, other copyright libraries, and the strange case of Poitiers accused of discarding its archives in 1989), and everyone faces the decay of paper. He suggests that much of this activity is disguised and under‐reported, and that we all too easily buy into the claim (even the myth) that going online, going electronic, is safeguard enough to preserve and conserve everything of value.
He drags the two separate parts of the book together by suggesting that, if you look across history and across the many “avatars of communication” (from papyrus to codex to the internet), it is easy to convince yourself that, since things are getting better (that Panglos heresy), therefore books and libraries (or at least knowledge and libraries in some form, probably virtual) are not in danger. This is a familiar, if not over‐familiar, debate to which only the future will provide the full answer. That said, Polastron reminds us, in a salutary way, not to place too much confidence in a glorious inclusive future because cyber‐information is not always free, is increasingly in the pockets of only a few global providers, and is usually not objective and reliable.
His case is strident rather than convincing, and there is little attempt to see things in the round (perhaps because he is locked into his historical perspective). But even in these terms, within his chosen brief as it were, the case against forces he calls the “biblioclasts” (book and library destroyers) is unevenly made. In an epilogue he returns to Alexandria where a new library has been set up – striking, attractive, well‐funded, but also partisan (he thinks) and an example of heritage sponsorship with strings. The final paragraphs of the book wander off into whingeing. There are three informative appendices providing information about what authors think (the slogan here is “delenda est bibliotheca”, the library is destroyed or at least seriously at risk). Whether references to Borges and Orwell and Bradbury make the full case for the future of libraries is contentious. This is a book, then, for stimulating debate rather than for the professional engaged, say, in rare books work or preservation, a book for students of history and history of the book. Its international flavour may appeal to IFLA‐types. The hardback price is competitive.
