Waldo Gifford Leland and the Origins of the American Archival Profession. Ed. Peter J. Wosh. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2011. 397p. alk paper, $62.95 (ISBN 1931666407). LC2011-028500

As any professional in the field of archival (or library) science can attest, our field is in flux, as globalization, automation, digiti-zation, and other forces of progress loom on the horizon. With so much transforma-tional change coming so fast, it's tempting to believe that no one has witnessed as much tumult in one lifetime as we have. But reading this volume may offer a pallia-tive view. The book, with its illuminating and probing look at the development of the field of archival science and the impact one man had on it and other fields of intellectual study, proves that others have seen (and participated) in even more dramatic transformations. While offering us a vista into the past, the book also provides connections to the present, demonstrating in a clear-cut manner how changes affecting archival science today were really set in motion and begun a generation or two before. We truly are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before as we continue their work. By examining the life of Waldo Gifford Leland, Peter J. Wosh introduces us to a man who has been eclipsed by other more famous leaders and developers of the discipline , as well as affording readers a peep at the " big bang " : the birth of the archival profession in our galaxy of the United States, at least. After a brief preface, in a steadily paced and brisk narrative, the author outlines his subject's personal and professional life, explaining the intellectual currents of his particular time and place, born as he was into a genteel family in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1879. Wosh examines and explicates the intellectual stream into which Leland entered as he pursued his college and graduate studies in Ivy League New England, and the crosscurrents of history and archives to which he dedicated himself the rest of his life. Working for, and with, various private agencies such as the Carnegie Institute , the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Historical Association, Leland was at the epicenter of interlocking movements that were, in an era long before the Internet, trying to foster scholarship across the country, the globe, and multiple disciplines. The obstacles he faced were diverse. Leland, along with serious scholars of American history he and various agencies were trying to help, was, in many ways, adrift in a wilderness without a map. In this country in …