The New York Public Library's
Books of the Century
Compiled by New York Public Library's Staff Librarians
Oxford University Press, $14.95
ISBN 0195108973
Review by James William Brown
It all started as a celebration of The New York Public Library's 100th anniversary. Staff librarians chose significant books published in those 100 years and mounted an exhibition. Invited to respond, the public did so with vigor. (No Faulkner? And where's The Catcher in the Rye?) So the list grew and is now published as the companion volume to the exhibition, Books of the Century. Introduced by curator Elizabeth Diefendorf with illustrations by Diana Bryan, the list now comprises more than 150 titles. They're broken down into 12 categories such as Landmarks of Literature, Colonialism and Its Aftermath, Economics and Technology. Each category has an illustration adapted from the wall murals of the exhibition, and each book gets a one-page description.
Of course, there are still quibbles to be made (No Updike? What's Peyton Place doing there?). But that's the fun of it.
-James William Brown
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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