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 o