Sir Anthony Panizzi started his fabled career as Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum the year Queen Victoria ascended to the throne, and he transformed it by sheer force of will over the next thirty years into the premier research facility in the world. He was not so much a thinker as a remarkable administrator, bringing out the best in his associates and coordinating their several efforts into a coherent and rational design. Before his career even the most important libraries represented nothing more than the taste or munificence of their founders and subsequent benefactors. Panizzi conceived in their stead the notion of a universal library capable of answering definitively any question that had been authoritatively discussed in print. To provide access to it, he had to completely redesign the library's catalogue and, because his idea so perfectly mirrored the imperial temper of the times, to...