Quiddity

At some point that day, Hitler returned to the relative comfort of his two-story farmhouse billet, opened this hardbound volume, and laid claim to its content in a notably timid hand, scribbling his name and place and date in the upper-right-hand corner of the inside cover in a space no larger than that of a postage stamp.

Eighty years later, Osborne's book attests to its frontline service. Blunted and brown, the corners curl inward like dried lemon rind. The spine dangles precariously from frayed linen tendons, exposing the thread-laced signatures like so many rows of rope-bound bones . . . When I opened this fragile volume in the Rare Book Reading Room in the Library of Congress, with the muffled sounds of late-morning traffic wafting through the hushed silence, a fine grit drizzled from its pages.

Timothy W. Ryback, Hitler's Private Library