There is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Address at the Opening of Concord Free Public Library” I was having dinner last week with a neighbor who, with his team, recently had a meeting with Bill Gates to discuss their project within the Gates Foundation. One of the words he used to describe Gates was "polymath." He spoke of Gates as having an incredibly deep knowledge in a wide variety of subject matter and...
A Bibliomaniac Amok
He owes $14,000 in back rent, has $14 to his name, he’s been out of work for two years, his landlord is evicting him, he agrees he should be tossed. He’s got a rare book collection of 3,000 books worth, by his estimate, $1,000,000. What’s wrong with this picture?Irving Leif, 62, the Jersey City citizen whose story hit the Jersey papers the other day, we learn, is a graybeard trust-fund baby. Disbursements to him supplemented his income as Chief Information Officer for the state of New York’s Department of Banking.The chief missed, evidently, the info on banking and money.Anytime a...