London Library Lightens Up March 24, 2010

The London Library, 14 St. James Square. (Image Courtesy Of The London Library Website.) Remember the hedge maze in Stanley Kubrick‘s film The Shining? Acres of impenetrable green walls, artfully arranged to bedevil intrepid explorers determined to find the calm, cool center of a secret, secluded space. Each new corner promises one more step towards the goal, but more often that not results in yet another dead end. But even those dead ends have a…

Curious George Escapes The Nazis March 19, 2010

Original Artwork Of “Fifi” AKA “Curious George,” by H.A. Rey, Circa 1939. (All images courtesy of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection.) He’s the world’s most notorious mischievous monkey. A scapegrace simian forever in hot water, desperate for yet another bail-out from his nameless pal, The Man In the Yellow Hat. (Wasn’t that guy the hero in a bunch of Sergio Leone‘s Spaghetti Westerns?) But even rabid readers who have held their breath as Curious…

Slumming With Charles Dickens: New York Library Relives His American Tours March 17, 2010

Getting A Head Start On The Competition: Union College’s Dickens in America. Although 2012 marks the bicentennial of Charles Dickens‘s birth, Union College in Schenectady, New York is jumping the gun with an exhibit at the Schaffer Library entitled Dickens in America. The Schaffer is showcasing several rare volumes of the author’s works, including a recently acquired first edition of A Christmas Carol. The exhibit highlights the Victorian novelist’s celebrated lecture tours of the United…

Wartime Artists Learn The Art Of War March 15, 2010

Abstract Art Or Camouflage? Ellsworth Kelly, The Meschers, 1951, oil on canvas, 59 x 59 inches, Museum Of Modern Art, New York. “All warfare is based on deception,” said Chinese theoretician Sun Tzu in his definitive work on military strategy and tactics, The Art of War. No one knew this better than the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops of the World War II U.S. Army. This unit was chronicled in Friday’s Book Patrol, in conjunction with…

Ghost Army Haunts Michigan Library March 12, 2010

Resting Soldiers A Watercolor By Ghost Army Soldier John Jarvie. (Image Courtesy Of Rick Beyer, ghostarmy.org.) An invisible army, operating in obscurity, mastering the arts of illusion, deception, and disinformation to defeat the Nazis in World War II. This could be a description of the French Resistance fighters, the band of brothers who operated in utmost secrecy under the noses of the German occupation forces, and have been called “The Army of Shadows.” But it…

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