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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and we're here from KCRW Santa Monica.

Today I'm very happy to have a show about the Library of America.

I've been wanting to do a piece about the Library of America virtually since

the show's inception 14 years ago, and today I'm lucky enough to have with me in the studio,

Max Rudin, who is the publisher for Library of America, and Jeffrey O'Brien, who is the editor-in-chief.

Now, for those who do not know,

for the past 20 years, a singular miracle has been happening in American letters. In answer to a

complaint by Edmund Wilson, among others, that America doesn't take good care of its classics.

These Library of America volumes have been coming out at the rate of approximately 80

year for the last 20 years.

Each volume, oh, at the beginning it would be something like the early short stories of Henry James.

But as it's grown, we've had George Washington and Alexander Hamilton and then spreading

wider reports on the Revolutionary War.

A great volume came out this year in which you can literally read the American Revolution from the battlefield, from the hospital, from the houses of state. It's quite an amazing document, a book documentary following the American Revolution.

Similar books on the reporting of the Vietnam War, two volumes, a volume of crime novels.

When you pick up the Library of America's Flannery O'Connor, you're going to have not only

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