Stories
Authors who gave their own books away
A Chicago doctor, a Boston lawyer, an author of a case for Francis Bacon and a former Chief of Protocol each signed a copy for someone.
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The people who tried to catalog everything
Every field eventually produces someone who tries to list all of it: early flight, Byzantine hymns, American history, the characters of fiction, the baboon.
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For the naturalist: birds, insects, fish and Darwin’s own letters
How people looked at animals, from Darwin’s letters to a state’s bird guide and the smallest creatures on a Puget Sound beach.
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Africa, from its peoples to its independence
Anthropologists among the Acholi and the Ovimbundu, Tom Mboya on Kenya’s freedom, the copper miners of Central Africa and a report on Southern Rhodesia.
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For the botanist: orchids, native fruits, seaweeds and the fungi that attack crops
Plants as scientists catalogued them, from Burma’s orchids to Brazil’s fruits, the seaweeds of the Maldives and the pests of ornamental trees.
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Small-town America writes its own history
Towns, lodges and companies that marked their anniversaries in print: Lee, Northampton, Richmond, Utica, Hartford and an island in the Ohio River.
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For the geologist: what the Earth is made of, and what lived on it
The chemistry of the Earth’s crust, the first land vertebrates, Jurassic fossils from East Africa and the seas off Egypt.
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Washington, on the record
Congress investigating the intelligence agencies and Watergate, the Senate’s closed sessions made public, and the journalists who roasted them all.
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For the physicist: light, atoms and stars
How physics and chemistry read the world by its light and its atoms, from a German handbook of spectroscopy to a Soviet monograph on thorium.
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For the tinkerer: machines that compute, dams and farm machinery
Engineering in its own words: the theory of automata, the history of programming languages, the large dam and the mechanised farm.
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For the student of medicine: the body, its diseases and how it grows
A doctor’s stories of old medicine, a Baghdad study of liver disease, the anatomy of the ox, the chemistry of nerve cells and how living things take their shape.
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For the theatre lover: London, Broadway, Paris and Bangkok
The stage in four cities: Shakespeare’s acting companies, Drury Lane, Broadway in 1936, Lifar’s ballet and Thailand’s classical dance dramas.
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For the musician: theory, the music of Greece and Rome, and folk music from Africa to Mexico
How music was studied and written down: a German theory handbook, ancient music rebuilt, African music archived, the music of Cuba and Mexico traced.
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For the word lover: Early Welsh, Sicilian words, Uyghur texts and Tuscan place names
Languages up close: Welsh before it was modern, a medieval Sicilian word-list, Uyghur stories recorded and translated, a river valley’s names and a Boston lawyer’s surnames.
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For the folklorist: customs, beliefs and the stories people tell
Folklore gathered in Oaxaca and the Pyrenees, Native American life, prehistory’s cup-marked stones, and what people do when they expect the world to change.
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For the diplomat: protocol, the Civil War abroad and the road to talking with Moscow
Diplomacy from inside and after the fact: a Chief of Protocol’s rules, an envoy’s memoir, the powers watching America’s Civil War, and Moscow in 1933.
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For the traveller: England’s byways, Indochina, Naples, Sweden and New France
Travel books from before the airlines: England off the main road, colonial Indochina, Naples in 1900, Sweden for English readers, and an American student’s Europe.
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For the reader of English literature: Scott, Wilde, the Anti-Jacobin and the case for Bacon
English writing read closely: a Highland poem, a letter from prison, verse against the French Revolution, and a Frenchman explaining the English through their books.
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For the fiction reader: a mystery, Henty, Dr. Seuss, Colette and novels from Spain and Mexico
Stories for every kind of reader: John Dickson Carr’s 1942 mystery, a Henty adventure, a Dr. Seuss king on stilts, Colette’s childhood home, a Spanish hospital and a Mexican novel.
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For the Americana collector: Roosevelt’s West, Williamsburg cooking and Maine’s working coast
American life in print: a ranchman’s hunting trips, a 1939 Williamsburg cookbook, Maine’s coast photographed, early Washington’s court cases, Columbus’s maps and a yearbook send-up.
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