SOURCE: Darnton, Robert. “The Great Book Massacre.” New York Review of Books 48, no. 7 (26 April 2001): 16-19.

In the following review, Darnton offers a generally favorable assessment of Double Fold, though finds shortcomings in Baker's rhetorical exaggerations and his view of historical sources.

1.

When journalists discuss their craft, they invoke contradictory clichés: “Today's newspaper is the first draft of history,” and “Nothing is more dead than yesterday's newspaper.” Both in a way are true. News feeds history with facts, yet most of it is forgotten. Suppose newspapers disappeared from libraries: Would history vanish from the collective memory? That is the disaster that Nicholson Baker denounces in his latest book [Double Fold], a J'accuse pointed at the library profession.

Librarians have purged their shelves of newspapers, he argues, because they are driven by a misguided obsession with saving space. And they have deluded themselves into believing that nothing has been...