The Library of Congress

I had a truly special experience yesterday in Washington DC during my first visit to the Library of Congress - the "mother ship" for all book nerds like myself. It's pretty remarkable that I've never visited the "LoC" during any of my various trips to the District, but somehow I had never been there before. To understand the specialness of the experience, I must provide a little background.

Several years ago I started reading the biographies of all U.S. presidents. It's while reading these books that I started to develop my deep appreciation for ancient history. As I've written before, our founding fathers all had a deep knowledge of the ancient world, courtesy of writers such as Pliny, Cicero, Plutarch, Demosthenes, Caesar, Livy and countless others. While reading about our own presidents I witnessed the reality of the deep connection between ancient democracies and republics - Greece and Rome in particular - and the founding of the United States itself.

Jefferson, in particular, was an authoritative expert on the ancients and their literature. He built the largest private library in the New World, much of it collected during his residency in Paris, consisting of several thousand volumes.

During the War of 1812, however, the British burned much of Washington to the ground, including the original Library of Congress. Jefferson, who spent much of his life engrossed in debt, offered to sell his personal book collection to the young United States, forming the nucleus of the new Library of Congress. Although controversial at the time, the deal was struck and Jefferson shipped his volumes from Monticello to the District of Columbia.

The story comes full circle with my visit just yesterday to the LoC. It turns out they have Jefferson's original collection set aside for all to see, laid out in the same manner as originally arranged at Monticello. Shivers went down my spine as I viewed the collection, including the very same volumes mentioned above. The very same Demosthenes that proclaimed the dangers of the rising power of Philip of Macedon; Pliny's personal description of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Jefferson held these very books, read them, and treasured them.

In fact, these are the exact volumes that formed the bridge from ancient experiments in democracy and republic, the exact volumes that Jefferson read and re-read prior to drafting the Declaration of Independence.

That blew my mind. And because it was a beautiful, sunny day in Washington, and I found myself without a cap, I bought what is probably the only Library of Congress hat (see photo) ever sold at the gift shop. Book nerds, be very jealous!