Book Patrol

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A celebration of the life and work of Gabriel García Márquez

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photo by Maria Mendez In 2014 the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas acquired the archive of the Nobel Prize winning Latin American literary superstar Gabriel García Márquez. In 2015 the archive was opened to researchers and quickly became one of the Ransom Center's most accessed collections. Passport, 1955-1991 In 2017 an online archive of over 25,000 items from the collection was released into the world and now, for the first time, an exhibit of almost 300 items from the momentous archive, including some that have never been seen in public, are on display in the exhibition Gabriel...

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International flavor comes to America: Early Ethnic cookbooks

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Chinese-Japanese Cook Book by Sara Bosse and Onoto Watanna [pseud.], Chicago, Rand McNally [c1914]. First Edition The folks at Rare Books Digest have put together an informative list of first appearances of various ethnic cookbooks in America. From the 1828 first American publication of a French cookbook to the first Greek cookbook that, amazingly enough, wasn't published in this country until 1942! Here's a sampling.  El cocinero español by Encarnación Pinedo. San Francisco, 1898. This was not only the first Mexican-American cookbook published in America it was also the first written by a Hispanic in the US and to mention...

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The Bookseller “spurred me on”: The deeply troubling Carnegie Library theft

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One was the sole archivist for and head of the rare book room at the Carnegie Library. The other was an antiquarian bookseller and proprietor of Caliban Books. They both recently pleaded guilty for their part in one of the biggest library heists on record, stealing millions of dollars worth of material from the Carnegie library. For pretty much as long as they were at the helm of their respective workplaces Greg Priore and John Schulman were engaged in ongoing criminal activity. That's a whopping 25 years of deceit! Priore, the Carnegie Library archivist, says  ‘I should have never done...

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In the Stacks: Medicine and Madison Avenue

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The Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History  at Duke University  holds an extensive collection of more than 3 million items that document the history of sales, advertising and marketing throughout the past two centuries. From that massive archive comes the digital collection Medicine and Madison Avenue. A gathering of close to 600 advertising items and publications illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States. Enjoy this sampling of familiar products, and who knew one could "Minimize the After-Effects of Tobacco" with Phillips Milk of Magnesia.        ...

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A university in the UK unveils what just might be the oldest known fragments of the Qur’an

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Last November we reported that a German University had discovered what was then one of the earliest known copies of the Qur’an. The folks at the Coranica Project, part of the University of Tübingen, had placed a manuscript of the Qu'ran to between 649-675 AD. Now researchers at the University of Birmingham have unearthed a copy that according to radiocarbon testing was written on parchment that originated between 568-645 AD, making it easily one of the oldest known fragments.  It is quite possible that the author of these fragments actually knew the Prophet Muhammad. The first Qur’an collected in book form was completed in about 650. The manuscript...

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