Readers for allowing me to be with someone who has elevated libraries to such an extent. [applause] let me just say, there have been patron saints of libraries, andrew carnegie, things like that, but you are now number one. I finally. Down andrew carnegie. You have. Thats great. So how does it feel to be the patron saint now librarians . Stomach when i started this book, i could not have anticipated that part of it. I was drawn into the story because really wanted to understand what happens in 1986 that this epic fire that close the l. A. Library for seven years, but more importantly, i wanted to understand why i cared about it so much. I have often said that if someone had said to me city hall burned down, i would have thought, thats too bad. And i assume they will rebuild it. But, hearing that a library had burns felt like this deep profoundly personal loss and come i thought why do we feel such a connection to books . Why do we feel such a connection to libraries . That the idea of one burning is so disturbing. So, this combination of both just the investigative curiosity, who started the Largest Library fire in american history, coupled with this over arcing question of why do we care so much about libraries and, i think that acknowledgment of our deep feelings about these places is what stirred a lot of people, because i think for many people it was a reminder to them about how much they care about libraries. You and i were talking about this earlier, as a writer, the thing that i am most interested in is taking something that seems ordinary and noticing how extraordinary it really is. So, libraries are perhaps the perfect example of something that is ordinary in the sense of we all know what libraries are, we have all spent lots of time in libraries, everybody grew up with a library, but this gave me a chance to say, stop and think for a minute how extraordinary it is that these places exist. Think about how extraordinary, i got a chance to tour this library. And aaron, the director and his staff and what they do here in observatory. This is the only library in the country that has an observatory. They have the free programming, its like being at the adler thats well talk about that. When libraries is like a planetarium and to have that so unique, this library exemplifies everything you were talking about that libraries do. And there was a connection to this library with your books. This is interesting little sidetracked which is, the first time i ever came to Rancho Mirage was when i began working on this book because one of the most important sources for me was elizabeth tl men who come i dont know she is here in the audience, but she had been the head of Central Library at the time of the fire. And then she retired to Rancho Mirage within her plan to retire was foiled when she was persuaded to run the Rancho Mirage library. So, it is really a kind of poetic moment to be back here talking about the book when in a sense, i really began the book here. I made a little reference to you discovered and in telling the story of this particular library, you ran into quite a few characters. I did indeed. And when i began the book, of course books to me rise and fall on the strength of the human characters. And simply downloading lots and lots of data about libraries would not have made this an interesting book. It really was a book that was populated literally by these characters come from every different angle of the book. There is harry peak, the young man who was accused of having started the fire who was one very particular kind of character, very l. A. Character who embodied this whole sort of aspirational quality of l. A. That draws people, that believes that at any moment they will discover celebrity and be elevated to fame and fortune. He moved to l. A. , dreaming of becoming an actor, discovered soon into his attempt to be an actor that he had terrible stage fright but that did not stop him in anyway. And and, he really did believe that he was moments away, that the next corner he turned somebody would discover him and he would become a star. But then, the unexpected characters were, i had gone into the book assuming that i would want to write little capsule descriptions of the people who had run the l. A. Library and its history seemed interesting. I thought this would be a short paragraph. Little did i know, that actually, let me back up and say, i think the world of people who run libraries is perhaps skewed to the unusual. [laughter] the world the people who live in l. A. Is perhaps skewed to the unusual. So, the venn diagram of people who run the l. A. Library is doubly determined to be slightly unusual. And, when i dove into the stories of the people who run the library, starting in the late 1800s, it was as if each one of them could have been a book. They were fascinating. They were eccentric. You had one of the first people to run the library who was a 17yearold girl at a time when women were not permitted to use the library. She was the head of the library. You had mary jones, who was the first train librarian to run daily librarian who was very, very important figure in this was turnofthecentury. She was deposed because she was called in by the Library Board and they said, you have done a wonderful job but wouldnt we all agree it would be better to have the library run by a man. And she said, no. On this was at a time when women still did not have the votes and she had the wherewithal to say, this is absurd and refused to fees how are, eventually the City Attorney intervened in other before this happened thousands of women gathered in los angeles and marched in defense of her and was known as the Great Library war. And, she finally left, the City Attorney basically said, you have no protection in your job and if they want to get rid of you, they can get rid of you. She was replaced by the eskimo bull, charles lamis. Now, charles lamis had been a journalist living in cincinnati. Had been hired by the los angeles times, he then packed up and walked to l. A. From cincinnati as one does. How long did that take . It was a couple of months. He arrived in l. A. Is a huge celebrity, people met him along the way. Cheering him on. So, he was a bit of a showboat you might say. He had no training as a librarian, but he was an intellectual. He was a writer, and, he really truly loved the library. He was a bit of an unusual man. He believed, he did not believe in censorship. But, he felt very strongly that people should not read books that he thought were stupid. , but rather them and removing the books from the collection he had a branding iron made with a skull and cross bones and he branded the books that he thought were particularly stupid and put her bookmarks in them saying there are barb books this topic. Assuming there are temptations to do that. R. [laughter] but, can be judgmental. And i have to say, if any of you want a wonderful field trip, the library does still have in the rare book collection some of those printed books. So, there was a. Where i was writing about charles and got so engaged in his story. By the way one other thing which is nothing really to do with the library but, he had a bit of a woman problem and he had dozens of extramarital affairs. He kept a diary of all of these different to sick eat straight what he who he told what to. He kept the diary in spanish justice for we love it and keeping it away from his wife. Well, his wife read spanish. She was fluent in spanish. So, they had one of the most public divorces in l. A. Divorce was not particularly common in that time but also scandalous. And, he had many wives over the course of his life, but he was also a brilliant man and a lot of what he did, a lot of the innovations he brought to the library, but most importantly his belief that the library was a democratic institution, libraries up until that time were really meant to serve educated people to help them become more educated and his feeling is no. Libraries are meant to lift everyone. And he promoted the library to factories, to Railroad Companies saying, have your workers come to the library. They can better themselves. And this was very radical. Its his spirit that really transforms the l. A. Library and remains true to this day. We only have a few of his branded books but we certainly have the spirit. Reporter on the other hand, you have hairy, who is an aspiring actor, zero what was he in the library looking for a place . What was he doing . Its unclear. This is really interesting to remember that in 1986 there were no security cameras, there was no record of who came in and out of the library. There is no way of knowing if he really was in the library. When you think about crime and 19, in the 1980s and how limited we were in being able to figure out even, was he in the library that day. , his former good i should say his dear friend said to me, you know, i dont personally remember ever seeing harry read a book. But, there is also the fact that he worked as a messenger, he was downtown a lots and its entirely possible that like many people downtown, the library was a place to stop and sort of collect your thoughts, whether you are there to take a book out or not. I like to think he was reading movie magazines because he was very broke, he would not have been able to buy or it would have been a stretch for him to spend a lot of money on moviemaker things so he could have been in the library looking up Burt Reynolds pictures because he believed himself to be a good friend of Burt Reynolds. And he told a lot of stories. So you have his stories woven into this because he fabricated. Yes, he was an incredible fabulous. And part of it was harmless, he just made up stories about everything. And what was interesting is realizing that as i was working on this, that libraries are about the essential human need for story. It is the essential unit of Human Interaction. Its the stories we tell ourselves comments the stories we share with each other, its the stories we save and preserve and pass on to the next generation. So, having the young man at the center of this crime story be in his own way then extravagant storyteller felt like it had a great deal of residence with the theme of the book, this idea that our lives are all stories. Sue makes as a journalist, author, just how did you get the real library most people would say, like you said, a book about a library,. Right. And, the writing, i became so passionate about this subject, i felt like every aspect of it fascinated me. The science of how in the fire 400,000 books were completely destroyed, but 700,000 were damaged and frozen for years to keep them from molding until it could be figured out how to possibly preserve them. So, it was just fascinating to read about this effort. It was the largest book recovery effort ever undertaken. In the largest fire. But, didnt get much publicity because. This incredible kind of coincidence of timing. I went immediately to look at the New York Times from that date because i could not understand how i had never heard about this fire. And, i pulled up the paper from that day in the headline says, soviets denied miltown and Chernobyl Nuclear plant. The same day this story which certainly would have gotten more attention and, i was living in new york at the time so thats why i looked at the New York Times. I thought, i cant believe the New York Times wouldnt cover this. Its maybe not the a1 headline, but i was sure that it would have gotten attention and suddenly understood why. The front section of the paper was almost entirely devoted to chernobyl and there was a story in the a section toward the back streets feet that this story, i even know people in l. A. At the time that i dont know how i never understood about this. Until very recently it was the largest structure fire in l. A. History. And thats saying something because there are a lot of fires in l. A. , unfortunately. And, it remains and with luck will always remain the Largest Library fire in american not in the world, sadly there have been larger library fires in the world and in particular world war ii there were libraries for the contents were burned in the building destroyed their president sadly, we have burned libraries since we built libraries. And why do you think summer accidents that goes back to my original impulse for doing this book, which is, they have been burned because we care about them so deeply. The nazis had a Commando Unit that were called the brand commandos. They had one mission and that was to seek out and burn libraries. It was an effort to send a message to people which is, your history is going to be obliterated, your culture will not be remembered, you will be wiped off the earths memory, we all think of libraries as one of the safe places, the places that are uniquely removed from the world of strieff. You burned down a library, you feel people would tear because your say nowhere say. They burn people. And unfortunately, in the history of the world i would say there has rarely been a regime that burned books that didnt at some point begin destroying people. We are, books are an extension of the human spirit. They are human objects, and theyve been treated in this most horrible way. As a surrogate for people, for memory, for information, for all of the things that we are that makes us different from inanimate objects. And its, you know, one of the most chilling facts that i learned was one of the worlds great book burners was mao tsetung, and he began his professional life as a librarian. He knew the power. Exactly. He knew how powerful books are. And he knew in the effort to reinvent Chinese Society that books had to be destroyed and clean the slate. Alberto manuel in his book, the history of reading, has a chapter on forbidden reading. Oh, really . And he says as slave owners, dictators and other illicit holders of power have known, the easiest group of people to rule is the illiterate. And if you cannot prevent people from learning to realize, you troy the book to read, you destroy the books. And its interesting because libraries are so, in the present day more than ever, really make literacy e a huge part of their mission because and, or again, this is an interesting revolution from libraries having been basically gentlemens clubs for educated men. Then it evolved by the way, i find it so funny that i was a astonished to learn that for many, many, many years children were not allowed in libraries. Then children 15 years old and older could come. Then children 12 years old who had a certain grade point average. [laughter] you know . And now we we think of libraries as being, having working with children, being so essential to what they do. But they werent, they werent permitted in the library. Now we have mother goose on the loose right. With babies and people reading. Yeah. They have stroller jam withs at this library has, they were telling me about their childrens room and that there are times when you have a traffic jam of strollers. Yeah, i love it. And it does seem so funny to look back on the history of this institution and realize that there was a point where the idea that children would be in there was just but we have embraced literacy, you know . Its a natural extension of what a library is in the very best sense. And there is such a lot of outreach on that. And its not just, i mean, its literacy for adults as well as for children. Now, you were surprised at some of the activities that libraries are doing. This library does so many things, different types of programming and things like that. And you were fining that finding that when you wrote what was going on in l. A. And other places. Yoga classes. You know, one of my favorite things was when there was this oil spill in porter ranch which is i i believe its ventura county. And people were evacuated for a very long too many. And the library became the community center. And the librarians knew how stressful it was for people to be evacuated and have nowhere, you know, they didnt know when they would get back into their homes. Is so the library started offering yoga classes and meditation classes to help, just help the general mood of the community. I loved it because, you know, nobody i mean, this is probably a radical thing to say, but people dont have warm, fuzzy feeling about government. And they dont think, you know, wow, i love going to the dmv [laughter] theyre doing better. Yeah [laughter] its nice. But we feel this tremendous sense of, i think people do feel that libraries do, are coming from an incredibly not only a positive place, but an efficient place. They figure out what people need and provide it. And there isnt a bunch of lines and red tape and bureaucracy. They see a need, and they move quite quickly to fill that need. You mentioned the stage craft of preparing for the library tours to open was doors to open was like being at a theater. I spent a lot of mornings going down to the Library Early before it opened. And, you know, one of the things i wanted to do was both investigate the story of this fire, look at the whole history of libraries and the l. A. Library, explore my own relationship to them, but then also conjure as much as i could the feeling of what is it like daytoday in the library. So i spent time in every department of the library and, of course, realizing that librarians dont come at 10 a. M. When the library opens, but they come earlier and get things ready. And in the meantime, there are all sorts of people waiting and very antsy to get in at 10 a. M. And its a ritual. Everybodys sort of milling around, and the security guards keep saying its not ten yet, its not ten yet. And it was a wonderful feeling of this preparation, this all of this buzzing activity, preparation for the day to begin, and then the doors opened and people flooded in. And the library began its daily life. And it was a wonderful thing to observe. And it was so much fun for me to spend time in each department of the library. And i dont mean just the subject departments, the english department, science, but things i didnt want even know existed i didnt even know existed like the shipping department and the reference reference. This library, i met the telephone reasons librarians here and was asking them, well, what are the questions . Or what are people you mean, theyre calling you up . Oh, yes. And its incredible. I had no idea because i, you think, well, google certainly has made it not, you know, not necessary to call the library. The fact is people call the library all day long. All the time. And, you know, they ask questions of some of the librarians, that some of the librarians are puzzled by. They ask a lot of questions that could be googled very easily, but they want a human being to interact with. And part of the librarians creed, as you know, is that we only ask you questions to satisfy your need. Even though we would love to know why you want the spatula and the timer and the other thing all at once. Right. We really do want to know, but we cant ask you why. Well, and that very deliberate, unjudgmental attitude is something pretty wonderful. I mean, i sat in the reference room, and it was really funny. Ive got to admit. If you want a fun field trip, i recommend sitting in the reference room for for a while because you think why at 10 07 on a Tuesday Morning is somebody wondering what movies dana delaney has been in since 1995. You think, wow. Someone was wondering that right now. [laughter] and wanted to get an answer if you. Right. Is and, you know, the lie brains are amazed librarians are amazed much of the time. My favorite one was somebody calling and asking the reference librarian if a certain can of beans in her pantry was safe to eat. [laughter] and the librarian actually knew a web site where you can google the identify aing marks on the can identifying marks on the can to find out when the food was produced and then had another web site she could go to that said when foods become dangerous to eat. And at the same time, she was worried that she might have some legal liability if she said to the woman [laughter] its fine, and the woman ate them and got sick. So it was really funny. Its also, i mean, i, i think we are, we have reached peak hack of human contact lack of human contact. And i see society moving back toward Human Interaction. And that is one of the ways that libraries offer a different experience than sitting at home alone and googling. And im not saying if you want a quick, you know, whats the capital of tennessee that you should call the library, but more generally i think that the, i feel that were, weve all been saturated with online inanimate experiences and that the place were heading toward as a culture is one in which Human Interaction is really prized and valued and sought after. Erin mentioned that at this library they had a selfcheckout, and they took it out because people didnt want to just do selfcheckout. Really . They want interaction. Interesting. You mentioned that the experience was is similar to what you had when you investigated and looked into a supermarket. You know, its this may not seem like an important interaction, but there is a moment when youre checking out a book and you make eye contact with the librarian and exchange pleasantries, i can absolutely understand how people would miss that. Its part of what they want when theyre in a library, is some Human Interaction. And i absolutely can, you know, this is what i think of as by cent social am by yet social interaction. Its the librarian may not become your best friend, but in the course of a day its rather nice to have someone say, oh, this is a terrific book. I just read it. Check it out, done. As opposed to going and scanning and walking out of the library with a book. Its a place where the automation doesnt feel necessary. In a supermarket when theres a long line of a hundred people with 7,000 groceries yeah. You dont want that. Then you want the automatic. And i secretly always fantasize about being a cashier, so theres part of me that loves the selfcheckout at the Grocery Store even though it always a takes me longer. But libraries are human. Theyre, that is what makes them special. Of course its the books. Butst but its the human aspect of it that has meant that they have not just endured, but thrived. Now, there was tension in terms of libraries being open for all, and that means all. People who are homeless, people who, as you call thernlg lost souls being in there. You know, when you consider the places where we interact in a completely uncurated way, wide open to anyone and everything, there arent that many places. Public parks, the library, i guess the public streets. And so there is always going to be an element of tension over bringing together the greatest extremes of society. Its also the fact that, i mean, that is the nature of libraries, is to be open to all. When you have an issue of homelessness in our society that isnt being well addressed, the places that have the flexibility to include the homeless are going to be overextended. Its not the librarys problem, its societys problem to not be providing more places that can absorb people who need a place to go and dont have anywhere to go. And lost souls who might not be homeless, but theyre lonely, theyre, they have a lot of time on their hands, and a library is a warm, embracing environment. And thank goodness that they exist because we all have the potential to feel lost at times or similar simply just need somewhere to be and not be alone. Now, i want to switch a little bit back to the impact of the fire, the hundreds of thousands of books that were destroyed. To give a sense for the people that are sitting in this room, erin, the director, told me that this room was filled with book stacks. And on monday morning those book stacks will be back. 60,000 books right where everybodys sitting. Were removed. How many volumes, again, were destroyed . Lets think about that. 400,000 were completely destroyed. 700,000 were damaged. And just as a footnote to that, of the 700,000 that were damaged, the majority of those were salvaged. Which is amazing. Another fact, i was going to say another fun fact, but its not a fun fact. The city of los angeles had insurance on the building but not on the books. The building did suffer some damage, but the primary loss was the books. So all of the money needed to replace those 400,000 books and to repair and hopefully salvage the 700,000 books, this is more than half of all of the books in the collection. That all had to be raised from the public. 22 million. Not a penny of insurance. I am not sure if because ive asked insurance people who said, you know, a building is durable, books you know, i didnt even know this. Complete new information to me. A library buys a book, and if its a popular book and gets checked out a lot, it has to be replacessed quickly because replaced quickly because books eventually fall apart, or they get soiled. And if so if you have a book like the da vinci code that gets checked out all the time, the one youre checking out is probably the hundredth one that the library has owned. Its not that that they buy one book and have it permanently unless its a book that no one ever checks out. But my guess is that Insurance Companies would be very uncomfortable e insuring something that was really such a fungible commodity. But thats the wealth of a library, are the books. And you mentioned some were soiled. I have to just share this. One library did did display on the things that are returned when books are returned. [laughter] one had, people use very interesting things for bookmarks. A piece of bacon [laughter] a photograph, so theres an entire department when youre checking books back in that return things to people. Now, i have to ask you something, speaking of the fire and the burning of the books. You have it in the book, is to this is pluck information. You public information. You burned a book. You became an expert in the physics of fire. Fire, what types of fire and all this. But you actually burned a book. Let me tell you the story. You have an excuse. I have an. Excuse. It was research. It was research. Okay. And i thought, you know, im describing the sight of 400,000 books burning, ive never seen a book burn. It would be useful for me to know what that looks like. But secondly and probably more importantly, i thought i logically know that if i burn a book, i can go and replace it easily. Just go to the bookstore, buy another copy. Im not removing from human civilization this document. So theoretically, i shouldnt find this discomfiting. I could not bear the thought of doing it. And i thought this is almost superstitious. So i thought, all right, im going to pick a book to burn. Come on, i can to this. So i thought, well, ill burn a book i dont like. And then i thought, that seems really wrong. [laughter] so i thought, well, ill burn a book i really like. And i said, im not going to burn a book i really like. Thought, well, ill burn one of my books because i have lots of copies of my books. You know a book that you wrote. No, like an orca thief. Ive orchid thief. Ive got a hundred, and then i thought, well, im not going to burn one of my books. [laughter] and i finally thought, you know, i cant do this. I know its silly, i know its superstitious, i know it doesnt mean what it mean if when the nazis had book burning celebrations. And i know im doing this for research, but i cannot bring myself to burn a book. And i thought im just not going to do it. One day my husband came home, and he was just grinning ear to ear, and he said i found a book for you to burn. And he handed me a copy of fahrenheit 451. [laughter] and i thought, well, by go, theres my book bingo, and theres my book. And i thought, you know, ray bradbury, of all people, would approve of this since he was, of course, writing about a society in which books were banned. And if they were found, they were burned. He also, coincidentally, didnt have the money to go to college. And for his education, spent over the course of 14 years by his telling, went to the l. A. Library, the downtown branch, every day reading his way through the library. He was passionate about the library. He loved the l. A. Library. He wrote fahrenheit 451 in the library. And the corner of flower and hope street the in downtown l. L. L. A. Is now called the ray bradbury corner. He became very instrumental in raising that money to repair those destroyed books. He really, truly was if there was a patron saint of libraries, it certainly was him. And i know when i burned that book, that he approved. Well, super, i have to say susan, i have to say and end by saying on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people who work in libraries every day and all over the world, we thank you for elevating libraries. Because it took someone with your talent to bring libraries in a way that we talk about em, were librarians, but you just put the grace and the beauty. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. [applause] thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] and youre watching booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend on cspan2. Heres some programs to watch out for. New york city deputy chief Technology Officer talks about the power dynamic between Big Tech Companies and governments around the world. Turning point usa founder charlie kirk offers his thoughts on what he calls the new conservative agenda. Georgetown universitys ben buchanan reports on the normalizing of cyber warfare as a geopolitical tool, and on after words, former Deputy National security adviser kt mcfarlane reflects on her time in the trump administration. Find more information about our schedule on your Program Guide or by visiting booktv. Org. Heres what congresswoman abigail spam berger is span berger is reading. I have a tendency to read multiple books at a time. Im currently reading three different books. Im