Patience and fortitude : power, real estate, and the fight to save a public library [Book review]

Abstract

The iconic pair of majestic marble lions guarding the Fifth Avenue entrance of New York Public Library’s landmark 42nd Street Library—Patience and Fortitude—fittingly lend their names to the title of Scott Sherman’s passionate defence of the New York Public Library, Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library. Based upon a series of cover stories about the New York Public Library that Sherman researched and composed for The Nation magazine from 2011 until 2014, Patience and Fortitude provides a gripping account of the clash over the direction and fate of this essential public institution, particularly the main branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, which one contemporary architect described as ‘a perfect machine for reading, storing, and caring for books’ (p. 128). [excerpt]