Pierce Butler devoted most of his career to the service of the nation's librarians. His early professional disappointments and a physical disability shaped his keen sense of observation and his commitment to scholarly pursuits aimed at promoting, as John V. Richardson Jr. puts it in his 1992 biography of Butler, "a true understanding of human life in the past or in the present." Butler's work at the Wing Foundation of the Newberry Library prepared him for his seminal role as professor of bibliographical history at the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School. There Butler provided students with a cultural and historical context for understanding bibliography and rare-books librarianship that was unknown in other library schools at the time. He made a lasting impression on these fields not only through his publications but also through the students he influenced. He provided them with a guiding philosophy, a sense of "deep...