This artilcle is mainly a review of Nicholas A. Basbanes book “PATIENCE & FORTITUDE: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture”. This time Basbanes gives an account of his meetings with a broad spectrum of librarians, booksellers and private collectors in travels throughout the United States and Europe.

In an extended profile of Lloyd E. Cotsen, Basbanes addresses the intricacies of collecting on a grand scale. Cotsen, whose fortune derives from Neutrogena cosmetics, built a vast collection of illustrated children’s books in more than 30 languages that now forms the Cotsen Children’s Library at
Princeton. He discusses how the idea of building a research collection evolved, and how, as other collectors before him have done, he began purchasing entire libraries: “When I buy a whole collection, I am buying the intelligence that went into creating it.

Articles, Library history
Access, Architecture, Barry Moser, Book Culture, Book People, Book Places, Book-lovers, Books, Booksellers, Digitization, Illustrators, librarians, librarianship, Maurice Sendak, Nicholas A. Basbanes, Patience & Fortitude, Penelope Fitzgerald, Preservation, Princeton, Private collectors, Remote storage, Robert Coover, Umberto Eco