THE WELL OF THE SCRIBES RESURFACES

ith a matador’s flourish, Los Angeles city librarian John Szabo whipped the drape off, revealing the entirety of Western learning beneath it. On a long, curving piece of bronze, six scribes—Native American, Aztec, monastic, Hebrew, Roman, and Greek—marched leftward. No one had seen this slice of the library’s history in half a century. The press was on hand to conduct interviews, snap pictures, and tape footage for the evening news. And there I was, holding mics from both