Affection for books

Just now, I had a quintessential graduate student moment. On Halloween night, inside the Social Sciences Library, I was practically moved to hug Frank Costigliola’s Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933, after I found the last confined copy: just 13 hours before the seminar where it may well save me from the embarassment of having to give a presentation based on hugely inadequate research. I got Offner’s Origins of the Second World War as well, so I will have an exciting three hours of trying to race through them before the library closes.