Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s splendid study of Abraham Lincoln’s key cabinet members, could never have been written but for archived letters of their families saved in libraries. Kearns’ influential book about America’s civil war reminds me of another vital role of local libraries. They enable creative writers to re-frame history. Imagine an industrious Monywa scholar in 2060 turning to a private library archive to write a fresh interpretation of Myanmar’s 60 years of civil strife? Will they exist? [...]
Continue Reading →