Laura Brooks’s Reviews > The Librarian of Burned Books > Status Update
Laura Brooks
is on page 362 of 416
The rare nights I lie awake wondering what the moment was that we list the Germany I knew. Some might point to the invasion of Poland…the Anschluss….There are a million such moments….But sometimes I think it was the moment right before the gasoline was poured on the books. The moment the most educated country in the world willingly, joyously, wholeheartedly turned away from knowledge.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:19AM
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Laura’s Previous Updates
Laura Brooks
is on page 386 of 416
They themselves were memorials to the ideals that were being celebrated, simply by the way they’d lived their lives.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:35AM
Laura Brooks
is on page 351 of 416
At the end of the day, Otto has chosen what was easy over what was right. And Hannah had watched her entire country make the same voice time and again.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:34AM
Laura Brooks
is on page 380 of 416
It wasn’t always that strength of character was inherent at birth. Sometimes it came through stride and struggle and failure. Sometimes it came through growth.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:32AM
Laura Brooks
is on page 369 of 416
And I promise you, if I’ve learnt anything from my time in Berlin. It’s this: an attack on books. On rationality, on knowledge isn’t a tempest in a teacup, but rather a canary dead in a coal mine.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:30AM
Laura Brooks
is on page 367 of 416
I was naive, you see. I thought politics were all civil, I thought world leaders were constrained by norms, that while there could be and had been war, that war would be waged by rational men.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:28AM
Laura Brooks
is on page 363 of 416
In fact, long before Hitler has the power to incite countrywide book burnings, he wrote in Mein Kampf that a smart reader should take away from books only the ideas that support their own beliefs and discard the rest as useless ballast…
I can tell you that banning books, burning books, blocking books is often used sf a way to erase a people, a belief system, a culture.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:26AM
I can tell you that banning books, burning books, blocking books is often used sf a way to erase a people, a belief system, a culture.
Laura Brooks
is on page 362 of 416
…many are shocked to hear that it was students who led the charge, who lit the pyres and brought books to the flames….
Those students cherished books….But they loved their own beliefs more. And that kind of love? It can rot a person from the inside. Can rot a country from the inside.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:16AM
Those students cherished books….But they loved their own beliefs more. And that kind of love? It can rot a person from the inside. Can rot a country from the inside.
Laura Brooks
is on page 361 of 416
I grew up in a democracy, fledgling thought it might have been, that allowed space for radical ideas and uncomfortable discussions, that encouraged critical thought and free speech.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:13AM
Laura Brooks
is on page 361 of 416
It can deepen with every disdainful remark about science and art and literature in a pub. A Friday night. It comes cloaked in patriotism and love of country, and uses that as an armor against any criticism….
I grew up in a place that prized intellectualism, reason, and civil discourse, in a country that held a reverence for books.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:11AM
I grew up in a place that prized intellectualism, reason, and civil discourse, in a country that held a reverence for books.
Laura Brooks
is on page 361 of 416
Few people have to watch their country die…I have had that dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a rebel shout but as a sly whisper. The cracks creep in, insidious as anything I’ve ever seen. It can start with rumblings about an unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will threaten your family, your children.
— Jan 04, 2026 11:08AM
