THE LIBRARY BOOK

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and sta ff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, Once that first stack got going, it was Goodbye, Charlie. The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven ho urs. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. Investigators descended on the scene, but over thi...[Read more]