William Jacques, the notorious "Tome Raider," was arrested in Selby, North Yorkshire on Christmas Day 2009 after eluding the police for more than two years. He will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court accused of stealing antique horticultural books from the Royal Horticultural Society's London library.The thirteen volumes are said to be worth about £50,000. It is alleged Jacques stole them by signing in to the library under the false name of Mr Santoro and then hiding them under his jacket. "Mr. Santoro" was a new alias; Jacques is also known by the nom de theft, David Fletcher.Jacques, 40,...
Books on Canvas: The Paintings of Xiazoe Xie
The Sex Lives of Civil War Soldiers
Johnny Reb and Billy Yank had a secret life, one that they and their families tried to hide from posterity and Ken Burns.They largely succeeded. Most men left no record of their sexual activities, or if they did, their survivors expurgated or expunged the record through destruction; the reality was a bit too seamy for pure sensibilities, legacies needed to be protected. Reports of wild times and venereal disease were not likely to be appreciated by descendants.Thus the Civil, our most holy, War, ennobled at the time and forevermore as a moral cause by both sides, has been stripped of...
Libraries Keep MLK’s Crucial Comic Book
The Comic Book That Changed A Nation."The comic book [is] the marijuana of the nursery, the bane of the bassinet, the horror of the home, the curse of the kids and a threat to the future."John Mason Brown. (American literary critic, 1900-1969)In December of 1957 a comic book was published that really did threaten the future--at least the future of American segregationists. Carefully preserved in the special collections of several academic libraries, such as The Smithsonian Institution, Morehouse College, and Stanford University, The Montgomery Story, a 14-page comic book is, credited with being one of the most influential teaching tools...
ABC’s of Book Collecting: Autograph
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe by Clark Ashton Smith, circa 1915with Poe autograph facsimileAUTOGRAPHIn our world it is an adjective (and is better not used as a noun). It is properly applied to a manuscript, a letter or a document, either in the hand of, and preferably signed by, the author of one’s choice, or on the subject of one’s choice; or annotations in books, whether signed or not. Descriptions of the former are commonly buttressed with abbreviations, for which see the list of abbreviations above. It is as well to remember that without the essential preliminary ‘A’, ‘L.s’ must...