In a recent post, I discussed ephemera in general and a certain piece that elicited memories of my family’s involvement in the liquor business during Prohibition in Chicago.My all-time favorite piece of ephemera also concerns the liquor business in Chicago during Prohibition - sort of. As with all ephemera, it, too, tells quite a tale.What About Girls? was published in 1943 by the YMCA’s Armed Services Department warning of the dangers of venereal disease. It was written by Eliot Ness. Yes, that Eliot Ness.Eliot Ness, special agent of the Justice Department’s Prohibition Bureau. Nemesis of Al Capone. All-American hero. Eliot...
"Speak a Jewish Word and Make an Extra Sale"
My girlfriend's father died recently and in amongst his belongings she found a curious pamphlet.The Joseph Jacobs Handbook of Jewish Words and Expressions. For use by anyone calling on the Jewish trade...for making friends with Jewish merchants was issued in 1954 by the Joseph Jacobs Organization, an U.S. advertising agency that specifically targeted the Jewish market. It was created for any business interested in cultivating the Jewish trade, and Calvert Distillers co-opted it for use by its salesmen and distribution to the liquor store owners they called upon so that both could more effectively service their customers with a little...
ABC’s of Book Collecting : Anonymous
ANONYMOUSThere is the formal anonymity of a book whose author, though his name is not on it, is known (e.g. Gulliver’s Travels, The Vicar of Wakefield or Sense and Sensibility). For the cataloguing of these and similar pseudonymous books (e.g. Alice in Wonderland or Jane Eyre), some booksellers use, and others dispense with, the conventional square (or equally common round) brackets.There is also, however, the real anonymity of ‘authorship unknown’. And once in a while the cataloguer has to admit defeat. Since a book by an unidentified author is harder to sell (other things being equal) than one of known...
Bloomsbury Sets Loose the Dogs of Deflation
The following originally appeared last week in Fine Books & Collections magazine. The Update that follows appears here for the first time, exclusive to Book Patrol.In a recent column, I discussed deflation coming to the rare book world, with particular emphasis on the auction houses.In my mailbox this morning comes news that Bloomsbury, the auction house that has been leading the market to realistic reserves, has now made it official with their first No Reserve Bibliophile Sale.The sale features property from Heritage Book Shop, Colonial Williamsburg andThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, and will occur this Tuesday, June 30, at 2PM...
Dropping the Books from E-Books
The race is on. Amazon, Google, Apple, Sony and a host of other companies are moving at breakneck speed to create the e-book atmosphere that will become your e-book universe of choice.In his insightful piece at the Huffington Post, Eebs: A History of Future Publishing, Giles Slade gives us a good look at the current battlefield."In the emerging world of e-Books, Kindle-Amazon will increasingly occupy a position similar to the iPod while Google (a collector and purveyor of e-Books) together with its partner Sony (a manufacturer of e-Readers) will forever be positioned at the lower end of the e-Book market...