This book owes whatever good it contains to the many librarians, scholars, activists, and other booklovers who took the time away from reading to educate me. In the course of writing it, I racked up particular debts to Ellis Avery, Alida Becker, Doug Beube, Laura Farwell Blake, John Bullock, Katie Calvert, Christopher Cannon, Amanda Claybaugh, Margaret Cohen, Patricia Crain, Jane Davis, Pamela Druckerman, Elizabeth Denlinger, Brian Dettmer, James English, Lynn Festa, Elaine Freedgood, Natalka Freeland, Gary Frost, Lisa Gitelman, Anthony Grafton, Stephen Greenblatt, Mindy Greenstein, Susan Halpert, Odile Harter, David Henkin, Lara Heimert, Isabel Hofmeyr, Jimmie Holland, Madeline Holland, Tom Hyry, Alex Jacobs, Maya Jasanoff, Amanda Katz, Eve Kennedy-Spaien, Thomas Keymer, Matt Kirschenbaum, Katie Lambright, Natasha Barajas Lasky, Michele Lamont, Yoon Sun Lee, Spencer Lenfield, Heather Love, Tina Lupton, Deidre Lynch, Alison MacKeen, Paula McDowell, Meredith McGill, Mark McGurl, Tess McNulty, Sharon Marcus, Tom Mole, Sina Najafi, Geoffrey Nunberg, Richard Ovenden, Andrew Piper, John Plotz, Jessica Pressman, Richard Price, Sally Price, Simon Reader, Catherine Robson, Hannah Rosefield, Matthew Rubery, Phillipa Rubins, Dana Sajdi, Sharmila Sen, Jan Schramm, Jenny Schuessler, Peter Stallybrass, Ramie Targoff, Pamela Thurschwell, Katie Trumpener, Sezen Unluonen, Susan VanHecke, Jim Wald, Rebecca Walkowitz, Robert Waxler, Porter White, and as always to colleagues at Widener Library, Cambridge Public Library, and to generous strangers on SHARP-L. Thanks, too, to the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Teaching with Ann Blair and with Jill Lepore has given me more than book learning. Maia Silber, extraordinary research assistant turned even more extraordinary historian in her own right, will recognize her work in every word. Nir and Esau: we are in a book.