Vol. VIII · No. CXLIII
An Editorial Publication, Published Weekly
Established MMXIX
The Dreyfuss Effect
Reports, Reflections, & Reckonings from the long present
Monday, June 15, 2026❦   Sapientia est Veritas   ❦Reading Time · Approx. 47 min
History·Memory

The Library That
Burned Twice

Alexandria, of course. But also Sarajevo, August 1992. What a city loses when it loses its catalog, and the librarians who carry it anyway.

By Ottavio del VecchioApril 18, 202612 min read
❦

This essay is being typeset.

The full text of “The Library That Burned Twice” is forthcoming. In the meantime, more from our History archive awaits below.

More from History

The Full Archive  →
Constantinople

The Clerk Who Saw
the Empire End

From the household ledgers of a middling Byzantine functionary, May 1453: the price of cabbage, a daughter's dowry, and the morning the walls came down.

Reverdy Aitchison · May 19, 2026
Archives

Marginalia
of Empire

Beside the official record of the East India Company, a quieter archive: the scribbled doubts, jokes, and complaints of the men who kept its books.

Ananya Dunmore · March 20, 2026
Potosí

Salt, Silver, & the
First Globalization

Long before the container ship, the world was already small. A mountain in Bolivia paid for a war in Flanders and a porcelain bowl in Macau.

Helene Quintus · May 2, 2026