Between Memory and Oblivion (Paperback or Softback)

A story of protecting the written word against a digital world threatening to destroy it.

Michael Ashe, a Los Angeles antiquarian bookseller, must confront the fact that his once-thriving business is collapsing. Even librarians have turned their backs on books, while pouring money into electronic data. But Ashe refuses to admit defeat. He continues to hunt for rare tomes in Mexico City and Paris, while struggling with his loneliness and searching for a woman to love. Along the way he learns the startling story of the best-read man in France. A man who founded a great library to preserve knowledge against the ravishes of time. This revelation leads Ashe from mere attempts to save his own livelihood into a public battle to save the life of books themselves.

A tale about the exotic and romantic world of international rare bookselling, and a cry of alarm about the demise of the printed book, the decline of reading, and the conflict between print and digital culture. Are we rushing into a post-literate world and a fade-out of human memory? Will even more books be "disappeared" into a Dark Archive? Only you, as a reader, can keep it from happening.

Peter Briscoe has had the pleasure not only of living with books as a reader but also of making them his life's work as a librarian and writer. For more than 30 years he built library collections at two universities. A specialist in collection development, book acquisitions, special collections, and preservation, he directed efforts that led to the purchase or donation of 1.5 million volumes from all over the world on nearly all subjects. He loved his job but increasingly worried about the fate of books and reading in a digital, post-literate world. Briscoe, who attained the rank of Distinguished Librarian at the University of California, Riverside, and subsequently that of Associate University Librarian, is now Emeritus. He is the author or co-author of five books, including a translation from the French of José Cabanis' novel, Night Games (1993), Reading the Map of Knowledge: The Art of Being a Librarian (2001), Mexico at the Hour of Combat (2012), and The Bookseller: Stories (2022).