Houghton Library at 75 A Celebration of Its Collections is a celebration of this important anniversary. Foreword by Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University, preface by Thomas Hyry introduction by Heather Cole and John Overholt

It was a desire, the creation of Houghton Library, a wonderful library located in Harvard, Cambridge, where there are only rare, antique and precious books. And not only.
Coolidge, director of the Harvard University Library wrote in 1924: "What I dream of is a beautiful building...in which we store all our works of great rarity and value..."
This book: Houghton Library at 75 A Celebration of Its Collections is a celebration of this important anniversary. Foreword by Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University, preface by Thomas Hyry introduction by Heather Cole and John Overholt, at the moment, the entire library is digitized and where there are no problems, it is possible to see the catalog, although of course nothing would be better than a real visit in a stunning place like this one.
What kind of material can be found in this library?
From pictures to maps, posters, passing through old books; I want to mention the Theodore Roosevelt Collection; just an example because all arts are involved from theater to poetry.
Why this library is important? Why a library is important? In particular when books, manuscripts, pictures are rare, you have a certainty: that there is a shrine in grade to keep all this material save and available as the Houghton Library does.
These places represent pure knowledge and they are a patrimony of humanity.
Some example of what you can find? A fragment of the Odyssey by Homer on papyrus by CA-1-200 CE, then the Gutenberg Bible, more or less printed in 1455.
A diagram by Copernicus 1543, a letter of Elizabeth I maybe dated 1552; in the book a poem by John Keats, the collection of Edward Lear, painter, material of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Melville, an annotated copy of MacBeth by Edward Gordon Craig, Rainier Maria Rilke, a Lincoln Campaign poster dated 1864.
This book is a gift to all that readers appreciating the best culture  existing in the world and the one who made the difference through the centuries, because influenced masses as religion did, as Homer did (still does) but also as poems, books, artists, did.
Cambridge is a city devoted to culture and progress and the final picture you will find in this book the one of a laptop computer taken by Jamaica Kincaid. For not forget anything and any kind of instrument that made and makes the difference in the existence of a human being. In the past and in the present.

Impressive, dreaming library, I suggest to everyone very warmly this book, and if you live close to Cambridge, a visit.

I thank Harvard University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori