When famed Egyptologist George Andrew Reisner's eyes became dimmed with age, he spent many of his last hours at the pyramids of Giza listening to detective stories read to him by assistants. They placed standing orders in England and the U.S. for new books.
Last week Harvard's omnivorous library (second largest in the U.S.) got ready to clear a place in its stacks for the 2,000 luridly titled, gaudily wrapped books, willed in 1942 to the university by George Reisner, who had been a Harvard professor for 37 years. The war had kept the collection in Egypt, where an officers' club...
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