Deverau, Peter, and The Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures, San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2017. ISBN: 978-1245145402. Hardcover: $35.00.

Shandi Thibodeaux, McNeese State University  
	Deverau explores the history of the Library of Congress and the card catalogs. This book begins by tracing the origins of the card catalog system, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia with the use of cuneiform clay tablets, and continues along to the twentieth century with the automated card replacement system known as machine-readable cataloging or MARC. Deverau also explores the history of the Library of Congress (LoC), how it was established, and the many challenges it faced along its way to becoming the largest library in the world.  The connection between these two topics is the development of the Library of Congress classification schema, contextualizing the LoC within the larger history of libraries and information organization systems. 
Interspersed throughout this book are images sure to excite any book lover, including ornate covers and title pages of classics found within the Library of Congress’s Rare Book and Special Collections.  These treasures include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  As an added bonus, all these books include their original cards complete with corrections, revisions and marginalia.
The current Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, wrote the foreword for the title. Over all, this title is remarkable read filled with more than two hundred full-color images of artifacts, first edition book covers, and images of original catalog cards. It is pleasing to lovers of library and book history as well as library lovers. This book would also be suitable for graduate students in library science programs.