Welcome to my book. Please, step inside.Oh, to curl up in bed with a good book! But not this book.Measuring more than 5 x 7 feet and weighing in at 133 pounds, Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest published book in the world. At this size, it may qualify for its own zip code.Production of the book stretched image-processing systems to their limits. The life-size portraits of people and the panoramas convey some of the staggering sweep of the mountains and the ancient architecture in Bhutan, the...
O. Henry’s Morphine Overdose, Pay-Scale, and Advice to Writers
Recently, while on recon for Book Patrol, I discovered Fog in Santone, a short story by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910) set in San Antonio Texas and loaded with morphine. In it, O. Henry limns the nexus of tuberculosis, desperate sufferers, and drug addiction amongst the sick and “sporting class" with lighthearted morbidity.In contrast to Fog in Santone, At Arms With Morpheus takes place in turn-of the-century New York City boarding house. From clues in the narrative, it is the boarding house located off Madison Square where Porter lived.In At Arms With Morpheus, which first appeared in the October,...
I Sing the Blue Jeans Electric: Walt Whitman for Levi’s
"Hi, Walt Whitman for Levi's. A fustian cloth, rough-hewn, enduring, yeoman, riveted,the fabric of America. These are my pants.Boot-cut. Perfect fit. Get into them, O shapeless, unformed youth!"American poet, Walt Whitman, has been drafted by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy of Portland to lead the battle cry, i.e. shill, for the American economy in general and Levi’s jeans in particular in an effort to get the demographic of the young into the venerable working-man’s pants that Whitman likely wore.“America’s poet was an optimist at a time when it as easier to be a pessimist. He lived through the civil war, one of...
They Laughed When I Sat Down To Read Piano 300
On March 8, 2000, the National Museum of American History opened Piano 300 in the Smithsonian Institution's International Gallery in Washington D.C.Celebrating the tricentennial of the piano’s introduction in Florence by Bartolomeo Cristofori, this outstanding exhibition was seen by more than 330,000 visitors from around the world during its twenty-month run.I’m a sucker for great exhibition catalogs, and that which accompanied Piano 300 is one of the most interesting and visually rewarding that I’ve seen in quite awhile. It is, arguably, be the best, most concise volume about the instrument there is with chapters that include: Early Stages; The Rise...
Tower of Babel at the Reference Desk
(Okay, we shoot the next lunatic, and take it on the lam. You with me?)The Merry Librarian is one of our favorite spots for prospecting; there's gold in them thar hills. Yesterday, Merry - we presume familiarity and beg her forgiveness - related the terrifying tale of a reference librarian at a loss for words simply because she was absent from high school the day the class learned to read hieroglyphics in Mayan and Egyptian, missed the pop quiz in Farsi, and failed Hebrew. And yet they still let her graduate! Here's the saga as related by Merry's correspondent:Here’s a...