"The natural rhythm moving the pioneer life of America forward was the rhythm of flowing water. It is as the story of American rivers that the folk sagas will be told." - Constance Lindsay Skinner creator of the Rivers of America seriesConceived and planned by Skinner in the mid-1930s during the depth of the Great Depression, the series planned to trace the history and folkways of the United States through its great rivers. It began with the publication in June 1937 of a book on the Kennebec River in Maine and finally ended in 1974 with the publication of The American:...
Hail to the Book! A couple of booksellers get physical
"if they are [books] to be of any use they must be as living friends or acquaintances and the whole art of forming and keeping a library consists in treating them on this footing alike mentally and materially" - from Books in the house by Alfred William Pollard, 1904In this video, London booksellers Adrian Harrington and Jonathan Kearnes take us on a 15 minute tactile journey focusing on the physical, irreplaceable nature of the book object. Whether it is Harrington tying together the long history, from Dickens to Harry Potter, of books being the launching pad for cultural stardom to...
An actor clears his bookshelves: The Michael Lerner Collection at Bonhams
Michael Lerner as Jack Lipnick in Barton FinkHe is best known for his Academy Award® Nominated performance as Jack Lipnick, the Louis B. Mayer infused character in the Coen Brothers film Barton Fink. But Michael Lerner has been entertaining us on stage and screen since the late 1960's. He has made guest appearances on classic television shows like the Brady Brunch, The Odd Couple and M*A*S*H and has also appeared as a guest star on an episode of the popular HBO series Entourage. His movie resume is just as impressive. From roles in Godzilla to Eight Men Out, from Elf...
The Death of a Book Collector
On July 31st Irwin Toby Holtzman, one of the more prominent book collectors and library supporters of the second half of the twentieth-century, passed away. Over the years Holtzman built numerous collections and the fruits of his labor can be found in 15 libraries around the world.Here's a sampling of a few of his collections and where they now live:-The University of Michigan received his William Faulkner collection.-The British Library received his John Osborne collection.-The University of Illinois received his American Indian collection.-He donated the greatest collection in private hands in the world of Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, in addition...
Collecting Nurse Jackie’s Patron Saint: The Urtext of Memoirs
Suddenly, It's St. Augustine!That exclamation is neither a message from the Florida Board of Tourism nor the title of a wacky, new sit-com about a talking St. Bernard with identity issues.It is, rather, notice that recently, within the space of three days, I was struck by a cluster of references to the man who wrote the first memoir extant, the father of all autobiographies, St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. First, I'm skimming through The Erotic Revolution by Lawrence Lipton (1965), "An Affirmative View of the New Morality," i.e. the sexual revolution of the Sixties, and my eye falls upon a single...