- Duke University Libraries received its largest gift ever this week, $13.6 million from university trustee David Rubenstein, managing director of The Carlyle Group. The donation will support the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections library.
- Over at Past is Present, Doris O'Keefe highlights some really fascinating early 19th-century government documents.
- The Boston Athenaeum announced this week that it will digitize a selection of its extensive Confederate imprints collection.
- The recent launch of Old Bailey Online, a searchable database of the Old Bailey's criminal trials from 1674-1913, garnered some coverage this week in the NYTimes.
- New from Penn, the Seymour de Ricci Bibliotheca Britannica Manuscripta Digitized Archive, some 60,000 digitized research cards for de Ricci's unfinished census of pre-1800 manuscripts in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
- J.L. Bell notes the release of the Bostonian Society's new iPhone app, Mapping Revolutionary Boston (a fantastic idea).
- On NPR this week Robert Siegel talked to Hugh Thomas about his new book The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America.
- A document thought at one time to be an autobiography by Butch Cassidy was revealed this week to be not that, although it's still not clear just what it is.
- An Abraham Lincoln letter was returned to the National Archives this week; it'd been "removed" from the collections at an unknown date.
- From 8vo, photos and a writeup of what looks like a fabulous visit to Hay-on-Wye (I'm more than a little jealous!).
- The Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth, England is likely to close next month after more than 60 years in operation. It was founded by Christopher Robin Milne.
- The first statue of Charles Dickens [in England - see comment] is planned for Guildhall Square, Portsmouth; it's to be installed by next year to celebrate the bicentennial of the author's birth.
Reviews
- Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen; reviews by James Zug in the Boston Globe and François Furstenberg in Slate.
- Charles C. Mann's 1493; review by Ian Morris in the NYTimes.
- Hugh Thomas' Golden Empire; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
