College and Research Libraries


Parnassus on Main Street: A History of 
the Detroit Public Library. By Frank 
B. Woodford. Detroit: Wayne State Uni-
versity Press, 1965. 487p. $9.50. ( 65-
11820). 

Relative to their role as custodians of our 
cultural heritage, librarians, as a group, 
show remarkably little interest in their own 
history. This is another way of saying that 
library histories, particularly histories of in-
dividual libraries, are not likely to be wide-
ly read. We tend to be progressive, forward-
looking, pragmatic, to view the Golden Age 
as still ahead and only reluctantly cast our 
eyes backward at our unglamorous begin-
nings. Except as a source of colorful anec-
dote or utilitarian explanation of how-it-
all-came-to-be, we are not likely to be con-
cerned with library history for its own sake. 
Add to all this the fact that the historian of 
a particular library, even a great metro-
politan library system, must necessarily deal 
with more local history than most readers 
wish to know about. These are indeed for-
midable barriers to readership. 

In what terms then can one recommend 
a good book such as Frank Woodford has 
provided us, a centennial testimonial worthy 
of one of our great and widely influential 
public library systems? Mr. Woodford's 
qualilications are noteworthy. For over 
thirty years he has known Detroit as a news-
man and chief editorial writer of the Free 
Press. During the past fifteen years he has 
produced six other books on Detroit and 
Michigan history, all but one of which was 
published by a university press. It is not 
surprising then that this work is backed by 
ample research and unobtrusively presents 
its story in its social, cultural, and political 
context. Especially striking is the author's 
skill in keeping his story moving ahead 
chronologically and, at the same time, deal-
ing in some depth with major developments 
and issues. But, it may as well be admitted, 
that, through no fault of Mr. Woodford's, 
many readers will be better served by com-
mencing to read with the chapter "Branch-
ing Out," about two-fifths of the way 
through, where the DPL clearly begins to 
emerge as one of our dynamic and proto-
typical library systems. In the chapters that 
follow, such as "Blood Money" (Andrew 
Carnegie's benefaction), "The Children's 

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Book Reviews 
Hour," "A Finger on the City's Pulse," "The 
Library Goes to War," "Days of Despair" 
(The Depression), and "Plowing New 
Fields," the clearly evident importance of 
the story heightens the interest. 

This reader was disappointed that the 
chapter on "Thou Shalt Not Read" was not 
extended to include a fuller account of book 
selection policy, with discussion of its neg-
ative, as well as positive, aspects. Though 
by no means ignored, more could have been 
said about the diverse publics which the 
library serves. But the book should be 
judged in terms of what it does, not what it 
does not do. Mr. Woodford has provided 
a sound, well written book. The story he 
tells should increase in interest as, in the 
coming years, the broad range of services 
which have made the Detroit public library 
exceptional become a commonplace experi-
ence to all but the smallest communities.-
John C. Abbott, Edwardsville Campus, 
Southern Illinois University. 

N ewspapering in the Old West; A Pic-
torial History of Journalism and Print-
ing on the Frontier. By Robert F. Karo-
levitz. Seattle: Superior Publishing Com-
pany, 1965. 191p. $12.95. ( 65-23450). 

Librarians and bibliographers interested 
in the movement of the printing trades 
westward will find this volume a useful ac-
cession to their collections. The first press 
to enter the Trans-Mississippi territory was 
operated in Missouri in 1808, but only five 
other Western states had presses before mid-
century. El Mejicano began publication in 
Nacogdoches in what is now Texas in 1813; 
El Crepusculo de la Libertad was estab-
lished in Taos, New Mexico, in 1834; the 
Cherokee Advocate appeared in Oklahoma 
in 1844; both the Californian of Monterey 
and the Oregon Spectator of Oregon City 
began in 1846. 

The migration of the printing trades to-
ward the setting sun was difficult. Old 
presses and battered type were carried on 
wagons and keelboats, railroad cars and 
muleback, to assuage the insatiable appetite 
of early settlers for intelligences and other 
reading matter from the eastern lands they 
had forsaken. Newspapers with such color-
ful names as the Guthrie Get Up, the Un-
terrified Democrat, the Arizona Silver Belt, 
and the storied Tombstone Epitaph, sprang