The Library Book

Susan Orlean, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and best-selling author of The Orchid Thief, returned to narrative nonfiction with The Library Book (2018). Through the story of the Los Angeles Central Library, Orlean provides a history of libraries, examining what we stand to lose as the world’s base of knowledge transitions into the digital realm. Orlean received a Goodreads Choice Awards nomination for Best Nonfiction and a place on Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club for The Library Book.

Plot Summary

Like The Orchid Thief, The Library Book tells the story of an eccentric character, Harry Peak, who became the chief suspect in setting the fire that consumed the Los Angeles Central Public Library in downtown Los Angeles on April 29, 1986. Peak was a ne’er-do-well from Santa Fe Springs, who hailed from a family whose primary legacy was a tendency to attract misfortune. Peak aspired to grandiosity and claimed that he was an actor, though he never appeared in any film or television show. Peak was eventually exonerated for the crime of arson, due to a lack of physical evidence.