Snip: I  do not think anyone ever counted the number of books in Chimen’s house, although he made partial efforts over the years to catalog his collection, and various book experts, some flown in from New York and others from London, spent weeks studying it after he died. Looking at the shelves, I estimated that there were probably close to 20,000 volumes in the house at the time of Chimen’s death. My father believed it was more like 15,000. Whatever the exact number of books at Hillway, it was staggering. And what made it more staggering was their quality. Chimen did not simply aim for numbers; he collected books and editions that were extraordinarily hard to find and, by extension, were worth their weight in gold. More important, they were the stuff of rebirth, ways to bring vanished pasts to life. READ MORE: My Grandfather Built a House of 20,000 Books From the Ashes of War | The New Republic