Well, i have to start by thanking the library of congress and i want to thank jamie and helene and the angels. 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 the library at the carnegie and thingslike that but you are now number one. I finally smacked down andrew carnegie. Like that. Greats how does itfeel to be the patron saint of libraries . When i started this book i couldnt have anticipatedthat part of it. I was drawn in to the story because i really wanted to understand what happened in 1986 that this epic fire that closed the la library for seven years but more importantly, i wanted to understand why icared about it so much. Ive often said if someone had said to me city hall burn down i would have thought thats too bad and i assume they willrebuild it , but hearing that the library had burned felt like this the, profoundly personal loss. And i thought, why do we feel such a connection to books . Why do we feel such a connection to libraries and the idea of one burning is so disturbing . So this combination of both just the investigative curiosity of who started the Largest Library fire in American History coupled with this overarching question of why do we care so much about libraries and i think thats 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 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 that we all know what libraries are. Weve all spent lots of time in libraries, everybody grew up in a library but this gave me the chance to say stop and think for a minute how extraordinary it is that these places exist. To think about how extraordinary, i got a chance to tour this library and the director and his staff and what they do here. And observatory. This is the only library in the country that has and observatory. Its like being at the center, not the sanitarium,we will talk about that. When libraries have a sanitarium theyre in trouble. I found 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 an interesting little side effect 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 Tillman who, i dont know if shes here in the audience, if she is but she had been the head of Central Library at the time of the fire. And then she retired to Rancho Mirage but then her plan to retire was foiled when she was persuaded to run the Rancho Mirage library so it is really a kind of a poetic moment to be back here , talking about the book when in a sense i reallybegan the book here. I made a little reference to a sanitarium. You took over 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 the 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 who come from every different sort of angle of the book, there was harry p, the young man who was accused of having started the fire. Itwas one very particular kind of character, a very la character , who embodied the whole sort of aspirational myth quality of la that draws people who believe that at any moment, they will discover celebrity and be elevated to fame and fortune. He moved to la, dreaming of becoming an actor, discovered soon into his attempt to the enactor that he had terrible stage fright. But that didnt stop him in any way. And he really did believe that he was moments away, that the next quarter 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 la library and its history seemed interesting, i thought this will be a shortparagraph. 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. The world of people who live in la is perhaps skewed to the unusual. So the venn diagram of people who run the la 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 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 trained librarian to run the la library and who was very, very important figure and this was turnofthecentury. She was deposed because she was called in by the Library Board and they said youve 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. And this was at a time when women still didnt have the vote and she had the wherewithal to say this is absurd and we refused to see power. Eventually, the City Attorney intervened and although before this happened, thousands of women gathered in los angeles and marched in defense of her. It 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 estimable charles lummus. Charles lummus had been a journalist living in cincinnati. Had been hired by the l. A. Times. He then packed up and walked to la from cincinnati as one does. How long did that take . It was a couple of months. He arrived in la as a huge celebrity. People met him along theway cheering him on. It was a bit of a show boat, you might say. He had no training as a library abundant but he wasnt intellectual, he was a writer and he truly loved the library. He was a bit of an unusual man. He believed, he did not believe incensorship. But he felt strongly that people shouldnt read books that he thought were stupid. But rather than removing those books from the collection he had a branding iron made with a stolen crossbones and he branded the books that he thought were particularly stupid and put a bookmark in them saying there are far better books on this topic. There are temptations todo that. There are. But you cant 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 branded books. So there was a point where i was writing about Charles Lummis and got so engaged in his story and one other thing which has 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 these different assignations. Just to keep it straight who have he had told what to and he kept the diary in spanish. You know, just as a way of kind of 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 la. I mean, divorce wasnt particularly common at that time but also this was scandalous and he had many wives over the course of his life, but he was also a brilliant man 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 how your workers come to the library, they can better themselvesand this was very radical. Its his spirit that really transformed the la library and remains true to this day. We only have a few of his rented books, but we certainly have the spirit. On the other hand you have harry , who, is this aspiring actor. What was he doing in the library . Its unclear. This is really interesting to remember that in 1986, there were no security cameras. There was no record of came in and out of the library. Theres no way of knowing if he really was even in the library. I mean, when you think about crime in 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, i should say is your friend said to me i dont personally rememberever seeing harry read a book. But there is also the fact that he worked as a messenger, hewas downtown a lot. And its entirely possible that like many people downtown, the library was a place to stop and sort of collect your thoughts. Whether you were there to take a book out or not. I like to think he was reading movie magazines because he was a very, he wouldnt have been able to buy or it would have been a stretch for him to spend a lot of money on movie magazines, so he could have been in the library looking up Burt Reynolds pictures because he was, he believed himself to be a good friend of Burt Reynolds. And he told a lot of stories you have his stories moving into this because he fabricated. Yes, he was an incredible fabulist and part of this was harmless, you just made up stories about everything and what was interesting is realizing 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, its 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 a extravagant storyteller, felt like it had a great deal of residence with the theme of the book, of this idea that our lives are all stories. So as a journalist, as an author, just how do you get the real library bug . 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 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 you know, it was fascinating to read about this effort. It was the largest book recovery effort ever undertaken. And the largest fire. But it didnt get much publicity because. Of this incredible kind of coincidence of timing. I went immediately to look at the New York Times from that date because i couldnt understand how i had never heard about this fire. And i pulled up the paper for that day and the headline says soviets denied meltdown at share noble nuclear plant. The same day, through you know, the accident of faith. This story which certainly would have gotten more attention. And i was living in newyork at the time. Though thats why i looked at the New York Times. I thought i cant believethe New York Times wouldnt cover this. It maybe is not the one headline, but i was sure that it would have gotten attention. And suddenly understoodwhy. The front section of the paper was almost entirely devoted to share noble and there was a story in the a section, towards the back. About the fire. But it was just faith that this story, i even know people who live in la at the time who had said to me i dont understand how i never knew about this. It was the largest fire in la at the time. Until recently was the largest structure fire. In la history. And thats saying something because there are a lot of fires in la unfortunately. And the, it remains with and will always remain the Largest Library fire in American History. Not in the world, sadly. There have been larger library fires in the world and currently, in the course of particularly world war ii, there were entire libraries where the contents were burned and the building destroyed. So there are precedents sadly , we burned libraries since we dont libraries. Why do we think, some were accidents but some were intentional. Many were intentional goes back to my original impulse for doing this book which is a been burned because we care about them so deeply. The nazis had a Commando Unit that were called the brin 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. You, we all think of libraries as one of the safe places, the places that are uniquely sort of removed from the world of strife. You burn down a library, you fill people with terror because youre also saying to them nowhere is safe. Youre not safe. There was an incredibly chilling remark made by a german philosopher which is where they burn books, next they burn people. And unfortunately, in the history of the world, i would say theres rarely been a regime that burned books that didnt at some point begin to destroy 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, poor memory. For information. For all of the things that we are. That makes us different from inanimate objects. And its really, you know, one of the most chilling backs i learned was one of the worlds great book burners was now they dont and he began his professional life as a librarian. He knew the power. Exactly, he knew how powerful books are area and he knew in the effort to reinvent Chinese Society that books has destroyed. And clean the slate. And birds help manwell in his history the book of reading has a chapter on for been reading. And he says his slave owners, dictators and other illicit holders of power have known, the easiest route for people to rule is the illiterate and if you cannot prevent people from learning to read you destroy books. Its interesting because libraries in the present day more than ever really make literacy a huge part of their mission because again, this is an interesting evolution that some libraries having been basically gentlemens clubs for educated men, then it evolved. By the way, i find it so funny that i was astonished to learn that for many, many years children were not allowed inlibraries. Then children 15 years old and older income. Then run 12 years old who had a certain grade pointaverage. And now we think of libraries as being , having working with children being so essential to what they do, but they werent permitted in the library. Now we have mother goose on the list with babies and people reading. A have stroller jams at the local library. Were telling me about their childrens room there aretimes when you have a traffic jam of strollers. I love it and it does team so funny to look back in the history of the institution and realize there was a point where the idea that children would be in there was just discussing but we have embraced literacy, 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. You were surprised that some of the activities libraries are doing, this library does only things, the different types of programming and things like that and you were finding out when you look at what was going on in la and other libraries, they older classes. One of my favorite things was when there was this oil spill in porter ranch which is i believe its venture or county. And people were evacuated for a very long time. And the library became the Community Center and the librarians knew how stressful it was for people to be evacuated and have nowhere, that didnt know when they would get back into their homes. So the library started offering yoga classes and the 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 Feelings about government. And they dont think wow, i love going to the dmv. But. Theyre doing better. 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, that they figure out what people need and provided 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 stagecraft of preparing for the librarydoors open. It was like being at the theater you said. Alot of morning going down to the Library Early before it opened and 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 la 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 . Though i spent time in every department of the library and of course, realizing librarians dont come at 10 am 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 am and its a ritual. Everybodys sort of Milling Around and the security guards keep saying its not 10 yet, its not 10 yet and it was a wonderful feeling of this preparation. This, 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 the subject departments, the english department, science but things i didnt even know existed like the shipping department and the reference. I meant the telephone Reference Library in here and asked, people are calling you up . Oh yes. Its incre