Little Library, Big History

Book banning by conflagration was, in the runup to World War II, possibly European fascism’s most indelible photographic portend of a human conflagration to come. Of course, it has competition. It competes with Kristallnacht of November 8-9, 1938, a purposefully unleashed violence and fireball remembered foremost by its aftermath of shattered glass. But I want to tell a story about this period of shameful Big History just in the context of books and Libraries, especially in the context of one very, very little Library. There is warmth in it that is not of pyres or blackened shards of glass. My primary source is the book “The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp” (2022), by Simon Parkin. Yes, a British pla…