The third printing is currently available from Oak Knoll Press.
Praise for The Private Library:
“. . . a major work . . . witty and wise . . . .”
–Michael Dirda, Washington Post, 9/29/2021
“After a page or two . . . you are hanging on his every word and enjoying all the asides and the joky tone. The shaggy dog has got into the library. . . .”
–A. N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement, 7/23/2021
“. . . a profusely illustrated, detail-crammed, Latin-strewn and yet remarkably unstuffy book . . . goes to the heart of why physical books continue to beguile us.”
–Julie Lazly, The New York Times, 12/24/2021
“This year’s best nonfiction illuminated complicated subjects, deepened our understanding of history and pulled back the curtain on fascinating lives…. Beautifully designed, Byers’s 500-page masterwork lays out how cultures from antiquity to the present created welcoming, comfortable spaces to house books.”
– 50 notable works of non-fiction, The Washington Post, 11/18/2021
“Reid Byers’ opus magnum on private libraries is everything it says in the title, but above all it is about the ways people contrive to have their books about them…. Byers wears his considerable scholarship lightly… So sprightly and charming is his style that I might call this light reading, were it not that the physical book weighs in at nearly four pounds.”
–Jennifer Larson, FABS Journal, Spring, 2022
“The Private Library is one of those books that, when you turn the last of its 540 pages, makes you sigh with pleasure. This densely informative, thought-provoking and entertaining volume proves as stimulating an experience as the room it studies and celebrates.”
-William Butts – Manuscripts, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Fall)
“For the bibliophile there is on practically every page something to learn, something to delight and something to amuse.”
–Charles Spicer, The Book Collector
“Highly recommended.”
– Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness
“Excavating deeply into design history, and the ways the past is continuously reinterpreted, can suggest paths to fresh ideas…writer and bibliophile Reid Byers has pored through centuries of evolving concepts….”
–Eve Kahn, New York Times, 10/28/2021
“. . . fascinating as well as extremely useful . . . .”
–Konstantinos Sp. Staikos, author of The History of the Library in Western Civilization
***** – Goodreads