I'll never forget my first visit to Minnesota. Being born and raised in New York there had been few reasons to venture west of the Hudson River. I was in my early 20's and coming off the disco years. Rumor had it that Minnesota was the perfect place to dry out. So off I went. It was late March and winter was just finishing up. In the cab from the airport, I kept seeing lots and lots of little shacks huddled close together off in the distance. Every few miles they seemed to appear again. Finally, after a handful of...
How to Make a Book (1947)
In 1947, Encyclopedia Britannica produced an educational film on mass market book making.Odds are, you've never seen this documentary, which begins with an author and his book and takes the viewer through each step of the manuscript's journey from typewriter to printer to binder, a Metropolis of production line machinery, repetitive motion, and human cogs in a process that belies the human thought and act that brought the original text into the world.
Who the Heck is Herwart von Hohenburg?
The Mensa Isiaca. Engraved plate number onefrom Thesaurus Hieroglyphicorum.No copies have come to auction within the last thirty-five years. OCLC/KVK note only seven copies in institutional collections worldwide, only one of which is complete, in the Bibliothéque National - France. But another complete copy recently appeared out of nowhere and into the marketlace, unheralded, without fanfare.The book is Thesaurus Hieroglyphicorum, published in 1610 by Johann (aka Hans) Georg Herwart von Hohenburg (1554-1622). It is one of the earliest works on Egyptology.It is a book that profoundly influenced Athanasius Kircher, one of the most fascinating individuals of the seventeenth - or...
43d California Book Fair Coda: Happy Trails
A mysterious stranger appears at the 43d California International Antiquarian Book Fair and blesses exhibitors left and right by spending over one million dollars on Bibles. Astonishing, a marvel indeed, but not a supernatural event. Or was it?Now word trickles in since yesterday’s report that some dealers are experiencing a post-Fair bounce, with books taken on approval, approved, and books left to think about later at home thought about and bought.Read last sentence, last clause again. Repeat. Some people who did not buy at the book fair went home, thought, then bought.This is an anomaly. It rarely occurs in other...
Has This Library Solved "The Mystery Of The Mummy Paper?"
Under Wraps: Egyptian Mummy from the Vatican Museums. Reality or urban legend: were the wrappings of ancient Egyptian corpses recycled and pulped to create so-called "mummy paper?" Archaeologists and other scholars have long debated the veracity of claims that mummies were imported into the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, stripped of their burial shrouds, and their bindings (largely composed of linen and other fibers such as papyrus and something akin to canvas) repurposed into printing paper. But, did this really happen? Are we being fleeced? Is this a fabricated tale? Can this yarn be unwound to get to the meat...