Life on Google #1 : Book Parade

With the help of Google millions of images from the archives of Life magazine are now available for our enjoyment.To mark this historic event Book Patrol brings you Life on Google - a new series featuring images from this vast visual repository.Above:Children parading the books selected for the William Allen White children's book awards.Americus, Kansas. 1959.Photograph taken by A. Y. OwenLink

Continue Reading →

The Bush Presidential Library : "A Halloween House of Horrors"

During her appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show last night Tina Brown, currently founder and editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, had this to say about what Bush is doing during his final months in office:"One of the things that I'm told at the moment is that Bush is entirely focused right now on his legacy, on his library," she said. "That's all he really wants to talk about is his library. Because he's trying to build a legacy. But quite honestly, one can only think that that library is a Halloween House of Horrors. From the Guantanamo room to the...

Continue Reading →

Boston Book Fair

Steven Schuyler reports on the Boston ABAA Fair. Some money quotes:"But the 'elephant in the room,' to use a good American expression, was the economy, which presented itself, as one colleague called it, as a 'cloud of caution' over the book fair."And..."The gap in value between truly uncommon material and the commonplace item is widening."Not to mention..."[William Reese] was concerned about a lack of young DEALERS. 'This business takes too long to learn, to become accomplished. I don’t see enough young, well educated bookish people going into the business as first careers these days. It requires too much experience to...

Continue Reading →