344 College & Research Libraries March 2022 a diatribe. Still, the sense of unease occasioned by today’s information creep becomes a sort of elephant in the room where such a hefty volume resides. Reading Information, it is easy to forget that the current moment is so heavily burdened by doubts about the veracity of anything or anyone purporting to be informative. The recent swell of divisive politics and a pandemic have stripped information of nearly all its remain- ing neutrality. Though this atmosphere of doubt is hardly a 21st-century phenomenon, the text, with a few exceptions, elides the issue of veracity in its historical survey. The chapters that do deal with these issues are some of the most intriguing and prescient. Richard R. John and Heidi J.S. Tworek deal most directly with the subject in chapter 11, entitled “Publicity, Propaganda, and Public Opinion.” Aside from covering the requisite “yellow journalism,” the authors delve into more nuanced topics such as the 1920s debate over propaganda. In the wake of WWI, John and Tworek tell us, even two progressives like John Dewey and Walter Lippmann split over the role of the press in eliciting “civic engagement.” While each man championed objectivity in public information, Dewey believed “journalists were high-profile players in an ongoing contest to interest the public in the public interest. For Lippmann, in contrast, journalists should remain discreetly on the sidelines and patiently counsel elites.” In many ways, the real treasure of the volume are the entries comprising a glossary of information-related topics. There are even several delightful surprises (“Photocopiers” and “Landscapes and Cities”). Some topics (“Lists” and “Journals”) are given comparatively short shrift, and librarians will be surprised to find no entry at all for “Information Literacy.” More than 700 pages into the volume, the entry entitled “Reading Against the Grain” provides a blueprint for interrogating history. With Information as a guide, any historian, archivist, or close examiner of the world will have the training and means to “read against the grain” of the past, recognizing that the book’s subject, and its context, must always be vigorously questioned. As good archival thinkers, Information’s readers “should ask questions about how our archives, as collections and institutions with their own histories and realities, shape the pasts we study and the stories we tell.” Information is destined to become a standard reference for every serious historian of the subject and a myriad of related ones.—Ron McColl, West Chester University of Pennsylvania Preserving the Past & Engaging the Future: Theology & Religion in American Special Collec- tions. M. Patrick Graham, ed. Chicago, IL: American Theological Library Association, Atla Open Press, 2021. 270p. Paper, $35.00 (ISBN 978-1949800166). doi:10.31046/atlaopenpress.43. Preserving the Past & Engaging the Future: Theology & Religion in American Special Collections is a fine collection of essays that demonstrates the practi- cal work and value of special collections in libraries for religion scholarship and cultural heritage. Editor M. Patrick Graham is a giant in the field of religious studies libraries and special collections, having retired in 2017 from the Pitts Theological Library at Emory University after a long and successful career. His subject expertise, as well as his genial nature and knack for building community, makes him the perfect person to have gathered these col- lected essays. The 10 chapters are divided into three sections: “Special Collections Retrospective,” “Special Collections at Work in Teaching and Research,” and “Collection Book Reviews 345 Development and the Future of Special Collections.” Many of them provide practical expla- nations of projects and programming as well as give insight into the possibilities for future special collections work. The volume highlights not only the importance of religious/theological special collections for religious studies, but also for a more deeply contextual understanding of the history of Western culture as a whole. It’s clear that the religious and theological special collections have broader interest and implications for the field of special collections more generally, given the outsized (though not unproblematic) role of the Christian Church in the history of literature, publishing, and the academy. Caroline Duroselle-Melish’s chapter on the Folger Library’s German Reformation collection demonstrates this integration of religious background to the “secular” world of Shakespeare, for example. The collections are marked by the historical and material realities through which they have lived—the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, travel and trade and time. As a librarian who does not work in Special Collections myself, I was educated and edi- fied by reading about different modes of creating and developing collections, illustrated by the processes of Phillips and Stickelberger and their respective collections now held by the Folger Library. The discussion of selective collecting versus collecting “en bloc,” for example, was an interesting dichotomy. Considering the advantages and difficulties of each gives a fuller picture of some of the concerns related to collecting rare and historically significant materials. Learning about the process and value of each was beneficial for thinking about my own library’s collections. The second part of the volume focuses on teaching students how to use and analyze collections and archives as scholars in their own right. Matthew Baker emphasizes the Burke Library’s desire for “materials to be experienced safely, with appropriate care and also with- out undue intimidation.” As Ranganathan asserted, books are for use, and the same goes for items in special collections. The goal is for active participation of students, scholars, and, as Brian Shetler and Jesse D. Mann’s chapter describes, alumni donors. Images of notable objects, book pages, and illustrations in several of the chapters lend credence to the theme that threads throughout the volume of the value of experiencing the collections, even as surrogates. The essays overlap in so many ways, illustrating the real collegiality and interconnected- ness of theological special collections. It’s a small world, and the collaboration and conversation between collections, such as the Pitts and Folger Reformation collections, makes for a robust field and a fulsome compilation of essays. The connections between libraries and librarians are as apparent here as they are integral. The volume perhaps would have benefited from some more critical perspectives and a more diverse authorship. Anthony Elia’s essay addresses some concerns around environ- mental issues and the prospects of special collections and libraries facing a climate-changed future, and there are passing references to the gaps in the historical record or the “silence of archives” throughout. I wish there had been some treatment of the complicated relationship of, say, provenance and marginalized histories. Additionally, I was pleased to see some discussion of COVID-19 in these pages, without it turning into a piece of explicit or exclusive pandemic reflection. The pandemic has changed our work and our lives, and acknowledgment of this fact is crucial even if tangential. The volume as a whole strikes a balance between appreciation for the wonderment of Special Collections—old stuff is cool, after all!—without falling into the nostalgia or voca- 346 College & Research Libraries March 2022 tional awe that can hamper much library work. A passion for the field shines through each of the essays, from the authors’ care for the history of the work to their excitement about the future. Overall, the collection is an excellent snapshot of contemporary special collections in theology and religion, the work the field is doing with and for scholars and students, and the possibilities in the years to come.—Keegan Osinski, Vanderbilt Divinity Library Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight. Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and In- formation Studies through Critical Race Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021. 358p. Paper, $35.00 (ISBN 978-0262043502). Throughout library history, the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) have not been centered, thoroughly docu- mented, or affirmed. Marginalized and underrepresented. Those have been the adjectives used to describe people of color in the library field. Over the last couple of decades, library and information science (LIS) schol- ars and practitioners have begun to fill out the LIS literature by writing their own ideas, experiences, and histories. Knowledge Justice: Disrupt- ing Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, edited by Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight, is a groundbreaking text that is the first book that introduces and explicitly applies critical race theory (CRT) to the LIS field. Knowledge Justice is composed of three sections, each with an introduction by foundational CRT/LIS scholars and 13 chapters. Every word is edited and written by BIPOC scholars and practitioners. The book defines and weaves major tenets of critical race theory throughout the text: race as a social construct; racism as normal; experi- ences and knowledge of BIPOC; intersectionality; interdisciplinarity; whiteness as property; critique of dominant ideologies; focus on historical contexts; counterstorytelling and voice; and interest convergence. Critical race theory is deployed in Knowledge Justice to facilitate the understanding and dismantling of white supremacist structures that make the profession inhospitable and toxic to BIPOC library workers. Leung and López-McKnight powerfully quote bell hooks, stating that “we searched for theory because we were hurting and trying to understand in new ways what this world was trying to do to us and our communities” (27), connecting the importance of theory to praxis and their potential for healing. The book opens with a powerful dedication to BIPOC library workers who left the profession. While reading, it’s hard not to notice the other names of people of color who no longer work in this field. Our white-dominated profession wonders why this is, and why can’t we retain BIPOC library workers. Knowledge Justice explores and interrogates these questions and also finds answers and ways forward. The first section of the book, “Destroy White Supremacy,” opens with an introduction from Todd Honma. He unpacks the CRT tenet, “Racism Is Ordinary,” describing how the chapters in this section illuminate the ways that racism and whiteness permeate our profes- sion. Chiu, Ettarh, and Ferretti problematize ideas of neutrality, applying the framework of “Vocational Awe” to explore how White Supremacy in librarianship upholds these values in terms of access to facilities, public services, collections, and discovery. Morales and Wil- liams analyze the ways in which information is not neutral. They use CRT to examine schol- arly communication and epistemology, coining the term “epistemic supremacy.” Epistemic supremacy describes how systems of knowledge production and discovery can uphold the