Bulldogging Cowgirl Fox Hastings.In an 1851 Indiana newspaper editorial, John B.L. Soule famously advised: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Apparently, young women were either better off back East, or didn't need to grow up. In any case, a lot of young women did go West, and many of them found the freedom of the frontier allowed them to escape their traditional Victorian roles as wives and mothers. Oklahoma's The Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has organized an exhibit that highlights the women who took...
The Unbearable Whiteness of Book Covers
Meet Sticky. He's the guy third from the right and one of the main characters in the The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart.Now here's a close up of Sticky from the illustration that appears on the dust jacket of the latest book in the series.Ironically enough, the title of the latest book in the series is The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma, which given that Sticky's color is locked away between the boards sheds a whole new light on the term 'Prisoner's Dilemma'.Here's the product description as it appears on Amazon:Join the Mysterious Benedict Society...
The World’s Largest Private Collection of Rare Books on Haiti
Later edition of one of the strangest, God-awful books on Haiti ever written.In 1983, Robert Corbett, a philosophy professor at Webster University, and his wife, Jane, visited Haiti for the first time to do service work. By 2007, he had amassed a collection of 2600 books and 5000 journal articles on Haiti.He is currently in the process of selling the collection in its entirety.I asked Bob to share with Book Patrol readers his thoughts about the collection in general, Haiti, and his book collecting strategy.BP: What made you decide to start the collection?I started the library in 1983 after the...
A Bibliomaniac Amok
He owes $14,000 in back rent, has $14 to his name, he’s been out of work for two years, his landlord is evicting him, he agrees he should be tossed. He’s got a rare book collection of 3,000 books worth, by his estimate, $1,000,000. What’s wrong with this picture?Irving Leif, 62, the Jersey City citizen whose story hit the Jersey papers the other day, we learn, is a graybeard trust-fund baby. Disbursements to him supplemented his income as Chief Information Officer for the state of New York’s Department of Banking.The chief missed, evidently, the info on banking and money.Anytime a...
Shooting History: Notorious 1963 Photo On Exhibit At Truman Library
One of the most famous shots (literally and figuratively) in the history of American photojournalism was snapped by a photographer who'd already blown one chance to capture a historic moment, and was sure it was about to happen again. That's just one of the fascinating stories behind the Pulitzer Prize winning photos on exhibit through January 24, 2010 at the Harry S.Truman Library and Museum.Robert H. Jackson, a 29-year-old photographer for the Dallas Times Herald, was assigned to cover the Friday, November 22, 1963 visit of President John F. Kennedy to the Texas city. According to a NBC news story,...