- The Guardian reported this week that the Vatican has received a demand for €100,000 in ransom for the return of two Michelangelo letters recognized as missing from the archives of St. Peter's Basilica in 1997. The fact that the letters were missing had not been publicly disclosed prior to Italian media reports of the ransom demand. A CBC report adds that the Vatican has refused the ransom demand.
- The Glasgow School of Art has released details of items recovered from the fire which destroyed the iconic Mackintosh Library last year. GSA director Tom Inns also said this week that the school plans to rebuild the library according to Mackintosh's designs (but with allowances for technological updates).
- Adam Gopnik writes for The New Yorker on the Warburg Library.
- A new, and excellent as usual, issue of Common-place is out, with a roundtable on Kathleen Donegan's Seasons of Misery, Meredith Neuman on sermon notes, and Lisa Wilson on early American stepfamilies.
- The Times of India reports on the planned sale of John Randall's collection of books and newspapers printed in India.
- The New York Observer highlights the NYPL's What's on the Menu? digitization and crowdsourced transcription project.
- A project to accurately date early Irish manuscripts has received funding of €1.8 million from the European Research Council.
- Dan Dwyer talked to Scott Clemons about the Aldus exhibit now on display at the Grolier Club.
- Rare Book Week is coming up soon: FB&C has all the details about all kinds of bookish events in New York in early April.
- The AAS has acquired a box of nine goose quill pens from around 1850, with the original labeled box.
- Greg Gibson reports on the Washington Antiquarian Book Fair for the ABAA blog.
- I missed this last month, but better late than never: Maine Antiques Digest profiled collector and curator Susan Jaffe Tane.
- Umberto Eco's latest novel, a bestseller in Italy, will be published this fall in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as Numero Zero.
- Jerry Morris writes on My Sentimental Library about Samuel Johnson's undergraduate library.
Reviews
- Barry Strauss' The Death of Caesar; review by James Romm in the NYTimes.
- Reif Larsen's I Am Radar; review by Christopher Byrd in the NYTimes.
- Andrew Roberts' Napoleon; review by Charles Reinhardt in the CSM.
- Stephen Kurkjian's Master Thieves; review by Art Taylor in the WaPo.
- Erik Larson's Dead Wake; review by Daniel Stashower in the WaPo.
- Sally G. McMillen's Lucy Stone; review by Janet Napolitano in the LATimes.
- Molly Guptill Manning's When Books Went to War; review by George Bornstein in the TLS.
- Charles Stack's Liberty's First Crisis; review by James Sullivan in the Boston Globe.
