Andrew Pettegree’s latest offering has a lot in common with his 2021 book, The Library: A Fragile History, co-authored with Arthur der Weduwen … From The Book at War we learn that a young Mao Zedong worked in the Beijing University library, recording the names of people who came to read newspapers. Mao had arrived at Beijing having already read translations of Rousseau’s The Social Contract, Montesquieu’s L’esprit des lois and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
[The full review is at https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/from-mao-to-the-cia-how-books-have-been-vehicles-and-victims-of-war-20231227-p5etuj.html]
Library Planet 