In her Foreword, Christine Pawley sums up the importance of Dee Garrison's book as follows: "Nearly a quarter-century has passed since the first edition of Apostles of Culture appeared. Since no book-length study of the formation of the American public library has yet challenged Dee Garrison's 1979 analysis, it remains the most recent---and most-cited--- interpretation of the public library's past, a landmark in the history, and the historiography,...