Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2014 -

With names such as Epiphany and St. Agnes, New York Public Library branches suggest sanctuaries and spiritual havens; their initial purpose was to cultivate moral rectitude in immigrant populations deemed in need of improvement.  The branches constitute, with the separate library systems in Brooklyn and Queens, over 200 library facilities.  It is hard to imagine that in New York City, prior to the completion of the iconic main library, the institution seen as fundamental to a democratic, egalitarian society consisted largely of scattered, private philanthropic endeavors.  With 129 pages of notes, a 23-page bibliography, and a detailed time line, this astonishing example of scholarship is also a novelistic chronicle of the evolution of an institution.  Its nine chapters extend from the seminal role of the New York Society Library to the founding of the New York Public Library, with stops at the New York Historical Society and the American Bible Society.  Although there are histories of the Carnegie libraries, many of which became New York Public Library branches, the only other notable history of the New York Public Library remains Phyllis Dain'sThe New York Public Library: A Universe of Knowledge (2000).  For all urban history and education collections.Summing Up: Essential. All academic audiences; general readers.