Times Literary Supplement Reviews Patience and Fortitude
The Times Literary Supplement (London) has published Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda’s review of Scott Sherman’s Patience and Fortitude. It’s an excellent read!
Scott Sherman’s subtitle is slightly coy: his book isn’t about the fight to save just any old library. He’s talking about the revered New York Public Library, one of the world’s great scholarly archives and research institutions. Located at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, this block-long Beaux Arts building, established in 1895 and comparable in scale to the British Museum, is guarded by two monumental stone lions nicknamed “Patience” and “Fortitude”. In Sherman’s pages these modest virtues are pitted against the institutional vices of hubris and condescension.
Essentially, Sherman, a contributing writer for the Nation, provides a scathing account of how the library’s well-intentioned but highhanded overlords wasted millions of dollars – and who knows how many man-hours – on an ill-conceived renovation project…