Apologies for another delayed links & reviews.
- After appearing in the International Herald Tribune earlier in the week, Elisabetta Povoledo's piece on the Girolamini Library thefts and the Galileo forgeries was published in the NYTimes on Saturday. Some important new details here on the case.
- Leah Price offers a history of the "death of the book" trope in "Dead Again."
- Over at The Collation, Sarah Werner posts a primer on deciphering signature marks, drawing on R.A. Sayce's article and offering some great Folger examples. Meanwhile, Heather Wolfe examines early modern jokes.
- The Library Company of Philadelphia has acquired Peter Collinson's copy of William Maitland's History of London.
- Andrew Albanese at Publisher's Weekly published an update last week on the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust and Authors Guild v. Google cases, both of which could go to trial as early as this fall.
- From New York magazine, "Dead Books Club," a history of pulping.
- The Beinecke Library at Yale has acquired additional Ezra Pound manuscripts, mostly from his time at St. Elizabeth's Hospital (1945-1958).
- In a happy result for scholarship and good sense, publishing house Thomas Nelson has pulled pseudo-historian David Barton's The Jefferson Lies after a strong NPR takedown of the book. Less happily, Barton says he's found another publisher willing to print the book. For more on this, see Tim Murphy's Mother Jones piece on Barton.
- Trevor Owens poses "The Key Questions of Cultural Heritage Crowdsourcing Projects" [h/t @foundhistory]
- From Brooke at 8vo, comparing the current "debate" over who invented the internet with the longstanding arguments over who exactly first developed moveable-type printing.
- On the occasion of an NYRB Classics edition of two of his works, Thomas Browne is profiled in the NYTimes.
- Manuscript corrections and additions in a copy of the Aldine De Aetna at Cambridge University have been identified as those of the author, Pietro Bembo. The copy was formerly in the library of Stanley Morison.
- The NYTimes covers Larry McMurtry's "Last Book Sale," held last week in Archer City. More from the San Antonio Times.
- Via Boston 1775: Princeton's Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Library and the American Revolution, consisting of 179 books, pamphlets, and prints, is now online.
- Laura Massey at The Cataloguer's Desk asks "Do Misprints or Typos Make a Book Valuable?"
- Want to make your syllabus into a format folding exercise? Sarah Werner shows you how.
- Errol Morris' two-part series on fonts and our perceptions of them is worth a read. It starts here.
Reviews
- Alexander Tsesis' For Liberty and Equality; review by Jack Rakove in TNR.
- Jill Lepore's The Mansion of Happiness; review by Dani Shapiro in the NYTimes.
- Debates in the Digital Humanities; review by Jennifer Howard in the TLS.
- Ann Durkin Keating's Rising Up from Indian Country; review by Lee Sandlin in the WSJ.
- Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Prisoner of Heaven; review by Yvonne Zipp in the WaPo.
