Libraries are the mark of a civilized society. They are an example of the best that we can do. Free, public, uncensored – they must be all these things if they are truly to live up to their promise and their purpose. They are a mark of public trust, in our confidence in ourselves to pursue knowledge and understanding, in our committment to self-determination. I was raised to believe that these were American ideals. That we needn’t fear ourselves, that we needn’t fear our minds being led astray by ideas, that our minds would be led back to themselves, to the best of themselves through the open pursuit of ideas. It is how we discover ourselves and how we know one another. It is no surprise that historically one of the first things an invading force or repressive regime does upon seizing control is to destroy the libraries. Free thought, an active and engaged culture, intellectual curiosity – they are all enemy to the forces of repression. I remember the barely audible murmur when the Baghdad Museum was looted after the American invasion. It had been left unprotected. Obviously its history, which is after all the history of the world and some of the oldest history that we have, was unimportant. One wondered, as one did at many moments since, what America ideal was being fostered then. The book I am writing was composed in great part in the Brooklyn and New York Public Library systems. A warm, quiet place, surrounded by other books, by seekers of information, and of course by seekers of warmth. Working there has its challenges. It is of course a mecca for the city’s homeless population. During the cold months there are few clean, warm places that a person can visit unmolested, for free. It also provides the invaluable resource of working bathrooms. One always worries about the homeless populations opportunities to eat and find shelter, but what of the other calls of nature? Perhaps the the libraries make our cities more livable in this way as well, and our society more civilized. It’s not strange that an edifying gesture reverberates its goodness beyond its initial intent, into the real of kindness and compassion. So I put up with the occasional cluster of raggedy plastic bags that someone might have stowed underneath their seat in the reading room, or the aggressive fragrance that follows (or precedes?) some of the visitors, the mumbling, the snoring, or in the case of one afternoon at the East 77th Street branch uptown, of an individual parcelling out his lunch with a plastic food scale. Deviled ham, mustard and other unidentifiable dry bulk ingredients ranged out in plastic sacks all over the table.Of course perhaps on nobody’s mind is the joy that these individual might get by actually reading. A homeless life in New York is a difficult one for sure, and in the winter it be downright dangerous. To eke out one’s subsistence is hard enough, but what of actually feeding one’s soul? Isn’t that an inalienable right as well? This afternoon I stole a quick couple of hours at the Business Library on Madison and Thirty Fifth Street. It is a palace among libraries, unapologetically high tech with banks of video monitors, LED message screens, inummerable computer terminals and those wonderfully supportive Herman Miller Aeron chairs. No more monastically hard wooden seats. It is carpeted and warm and spacious and like all libraries welcoming. I shared the place with scores of business students, retired seniors catching up on their correspondence and periodicals and of course numerous members of the city’s street population. New York then exits on the inside as well as the outside. In a city growing increasingly divided in this regard, as Manhattan becomes a crystal island, as more and more residences and facilities for the wealthy are created, the library dissolves that boundary.