Andrew Pettegree holds a professorship at St Andrews University and is one of the leading experts on Europe during the Reformation. He is the author of The Invention of News, which won the Goldsmith Prize and Brand Luther, among other publications. Arthur der Weduwen is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Deputy Director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue project at St Andrews. This is his fifth book.
A sweeping, absorbing history, deeply researched, of that extraordinary and enduring phenomenon: the library -- Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack What is a 'library'? Is it a mute display of personal wealth and power, or of a humble devotion to God? A routine community resource, or a waste of taxpayers' money? In The Library, we are led nimbly through the centuries, seeing how it has been all of these things and more, as the authors place on the shelf a cornucopia of bookish history. -- Judith Flanders, author of A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order