Inspiration Point“Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker’s library” is how Steven Levy begins his piece for Wired on this amazing library. Though Walker has opened his library in the past to select schools, executives, politicians, and scholars this is the first time he has invited a member of the press to have a look.
Walker, the founder of Priceline.com and Walker Digital, is an inventor and entrepreneur who has been twice been named by the editors of TIME magazine as one of the 50 most influential business leaders in the digital age. Business Week selected him as one of its 25 Internet pioneers most responsible for “changing the competitive landscape of almost every industry in the world.” Newsweek cited him as one of three executives at the forefront of the Internet commerce revolution.
Well, now he can add this to his bio- Creator of one of the most amazing private libraries in the modern age.
Walker’s approach “shuns the sort of bibliomania that covets first editions for their own sake”
“What gets him excited are things that changed the way people think” and his library is teeming with technical and intellectual hi-spots. “What excites him even more is using his treasures to make mind-expanding connections…like placing a 16th-century map that combines experience and guesswork—”the first one showing North and South America,” he says—next to a modern map carried by astronauts to the moon”
Reading RoomHere’s what you’re looking at:
Bottom row – a slew of jeweled bindings by Sangorski & Sutcliffe
On the table (first row, from left) –
– a 16th-century book of jousting,
-a Dickens novel decorated with the author’s portrait, and (open, with Post-it flags) an original – – a copy of the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the first illustrated history book.
Second row:
– the 1535 Coverdale Bible (the first completely translated into modern English),
– a medieval tome with intricate illustrations of dwarfs,
– a collection of portraits commissioned at a 17th-century German festival
– a tree-bark Indonesian guide to cannibalism
– a Middle Eastern mother goddess icon from around 5000 BC.
and it just keeps going.
Walker refers to his library as “an engagement space,” he even holds company meetings in the library (at the Inspiration Point section pictured above).
“In no time, your mind is stretched like hot taffy.” says Levy and that after all is the essence of a library.
Thanks for letting us in.