Final Book Choice

For my final book review, I am reading Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century by Rebecca Knuth, a professor of the University of Hawaii's Library and Information Studies department. At first glance, this does not seem a likely book for a class titled "History of American Librarianship." However, Knuth discusses the cultural processes regarding book burning and library looting/destruction and I feel this has relevancy to America's history of censoring books and libraries, intellectual freedom and access to information issues, and how culturally significant libraries are as well as their place in societies, all topics we will have discussed by the end of this class. I am especially interested in how Knuth will construct an argument for the reasons people "consider the destruction of books a positive process" since it still happens today even in the U.S., in addition to her final conclusion that libricide destroys not only books and libraries but the "common cultural heritage of the world" since that places libraries in societies and history as particularly special cultural agents (which we as a class would all agree upon but not necessarily other entities). And I am really intrigued by the concept of "libricide."