Handyman Jailed for Manuscript Thefts

From the Guardian today, a report that Tyrone Somers, 41, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for the theft of manuscripts from the London home of bookseller Rick Gekoski. Gekoski had reportedly hired Somers as a handyman and assigned him certain tasks to be carried out over the weekend of 23-24 July. When Gekoski returned, however, the tasks were undone and £36,000 worth of manuscript items were missing.

Somers turned himself in, returning the documents at the same time. The report indicates that Somers suffers from bipolar disorder and that he told police that "he had been advised that going to prison would solve" his psychological problems. Prosecutors say he told police that "he went into the house and for a short time he battled with these thoughts. He said he took the book of manuscripts because he knew it would extend his prison sentence."

More from the Independent, including quotes from Gekoski.

Book Review: "Ethan Allen"

Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (W.W. Norton, 2011) is the first full-scale biography of Allen in a generation, and that alone would make Randall's book worth a read for anyone interested in the Revolutionary period (especially someone who might by now be tired of biographies of the usual suspects).

Randall does well at telling the story of Allen's tempestuous life, from his early days in Connecticut during the Great Awakening's theological debates to his pre-Revolutionary paramilitary activities in what would become Vermont, resulting in his emergence as the leader of those in the "New Hampshire grant" area who sought release from the overlapping claims of New York and New Hampshire. The reconstruction of Allen's surprise raid on Fort Ticonderoga, and the subsequent defeat at Montreal which led to Allen being held as a British prisoner of war for almost three years are nicely done, although covered fairly quickly.

The best parts of the book for me were the sections covering Allen's captivity, followed by his years of wily machinations to obtain first Vermont's independence and then statehood, and then his few twilight years (during which he wrote a deist tract, Reason the only oracle of man, which was received very poorly indeed). Allen's early death, at age 51, robbed the young United States of a character who certainly would have played some interesting role had he lived longer.

Randall teases out the myths and legends that have sprung up around Allen's life quite well, picking through the historiographical rubble to get at the heart of the matter, and discovering valuable new pieces of evidence through new archival research. For that, and for its examination of Allen's writings, this book deserves much praise.

Unfortunately, the book, at 540 pages, runs about 150 pages too long. There are lengthy passages of digression which just don't fit; these mostly come in the opening chapters, with seven pages on Anne Hutchinson, for example. The narrative could have been greatly tightened up and the writing improved by another round of editing: too many chapter sections begin with clunky transitional phrases like "By the time ... ," and "At this juncture," and there are a few really wince-inducing lines ("The announcement of the birth of the United States at Lexington and Concord," &c.). Additional silly mistakes (e.g. the number of people killed in the Boston Massacre) and some questionable (and uncited) statements in the Great Awakening section also gave me pause.

I hope that any second edition will correct many of the errors which detract from what would otherwise be a most welcome addition to the genre.

Links & Reviews

- Dan Cohen's got a very smart piece in the Atlantic about the HathiTrust/Authors Guild lawsuit; make this your must-read essay for the weekend.

- Another don't-miss is Brooke Palmieri's 8vo post about the book catalogues of E.P. Goldschmidt.

- Writing in the Chronicle, Kathleen Fitzpatrick urges young scholars to "do the risky thing" in digital humanities.

- Maurice Sendak is doing interviews about his new book, Bumble-Ardy. Globe and Mail; Fresh Air.

- Susan Orlean talked to NPR this week about her new book, Rin Tin Tin.

- Some more great stuff from The Collation this week: Sarah Werner profiles a 1565 Guyot type specimen broadside, which a marginal note suggests was used to sell Guyot's types to London printers, and (on her own blog) notes some fascinating marginalia in a copy of Gower's Confessio amantis.

- From Houghton Library, a new video on the handling of rare books and archival materials.

- John O'Connell writes in the Scotsman about the origins of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, which began with an interesting collaboration between Conan Doyle and his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson.

- Also on NPR this week, Stephen Greenblatt discussed The Swerve.

Reviews

- Ann Blair's Too Much to Know; review by Jacob Soll in TNR.

- Neal Stephenson's Reamde; review by Tom Bissell in the NYTimes.

- Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Lawrence Bergreen's Columbus; review by Ian W. Toll in the NYTimes.

- Simon Garfield's Just My Type; review by Paul Shaw in Salon.

Auction Report: Results from Bloomsbury; Christie's Preview

Results for Bloomsbury London's sale of The Cetus Library: Food & Drink, Agriculture, Gardening and Social History, 1543 - 1829 on 22 September are here. The top seller, at £20,000, was a lovely copy of Reginald Scot's 1584 work The Discoverie of Witchcraft. A copy of the first edition of Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery (London, 1747) sold for £13,000, and the first English edition of Rembert Dodoens' A Nievve Herbal (London, 1578), fetched £10,000.

Philip Miller's Figures of the most beautiful, useful, and uncommon plants described in the Gardener's Dictionary (London, 1755-1760) sold for £11,000, and a copy of the very rare The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly Called Joan Cromwell (London, 1664), containing recipes supposedly from the table of Oliver Cromwell's court, sold for £7,500 (over estimates of just £1,000-1,500).

Christie's London will sell Travel, Science and Natural History items on 27 September, in 407 lots. Lots of artifacts and artwork: the top-estimated lot is a pair of 1750 Valk table globes (est. £50,000-70,000). There's also an Enigma Machine (est. £30,000-50,000). Among the books, de la Sagra's Historica fisica, politica y natural de la Isla de Cuba (Paris, 1839-1861) is estimated at £15,000-25,000, and there are some other great 19th-century travel and natural history books on offer.

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what arrived this week:

- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (Crown, 2012). Publisher.

- American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- Columbus: The Four Voyages by Laurence Bergreen (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- George Washington's Expense Account; edited by Marvin Kitman (Grove Press, 2001). Amazon.

- McSweeney's Issue 38; edited by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2011). Amazon.

Book Review: "The Revisionists"

Thomas Mullen's The Revisionists (Mulholland Books, 2011) is a fast-paced, highly intellectual thriller with all sorts of interesting things to say about the intersections of the past, present and future and the ways in which individual actions and events shape history. Our main character, Zed, is an agent from the future, sent back in time to ensure that all the nasty events of our own day still happen so that the humans of the future can live in a society made perfected by learning from the mistakes of the past. That means taking out the historical agitators (hags) also sent back in time in order to keep those events from happening.

As Zed carries out his gruesome but necessary missions, Mullen draws in other characters, spinning a complicated web of betrayals, relationships and pursuits: we meet former CIA operative Leo Hastings, corporate lawyer Tasha Wilson (grieving over the loss of her soldier brother), and a young Indonesian maid being mistreated by her Korean diplomat employers. Mysterious men in dark SUVs from various intelligence agencies crop up at various points.

Complex, dark, and thought-provoking. Sometimes a bit hard to follow, but overall, quite well done. And the cover design is one of the best I've seen in a very long time.

Links & Reviews

- This week's big news was a new lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild and other interest groups against HathiTrust and participating universities. Julie Bosman covered the suit for the NYTimes, and Jen Howard for the Chronicle. There were several angles to all this, one of which was HathiTrust's list of possibly orphaned works, rights-holders for some of which were quickly identified. Michigan said they would re-examine their process for including orphaned works. And Kevin Smith's open letter to one of the author identified as the rightsholder is certainly worth a read.

- Meanwhile, a status conference was held in the original Google Books lawsuit; judge Denny Chin has outlined a proposed schedule to bring the case to trial, although both sides say they continue to negotiate and hope to reach a settlement.

- Steve Ferguson's found a nifty 1872, "The Printer's Sheet of Miscellaneous Trade Receipts" - things like making fireproof paper, gilding edges of books, removing ink blotches from paper, &c.

- Over at the new Folger blog The Collation (which you should be reading if you're not already), Heather Wolfe posts on a new acquisition: a collection of deeds documenting the ownership of a Fleet Street property from 1543-1735. The deeds are notable because they offer up the precise location of Richard Tottel's printing house and provide evidence of the "evolution of this property into various other booksellers’ shops and coffeehouses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries," as Heather writes.

- Also on The Collation this week, a Q&A with new Folger director Michael Witmore.

- JSTOR released the full list [PDF] of titles from which early content is now freely available. Some great stuff here; kudos to them for releasing it.

- At Booktryst, a short profile of the English binder Roger Payne, and a look at some early Poe titles coming up for auction at Sotheby's on 20 October (along with a whole bunch of other great things; I'll have a preview up of the sale up shortly).

- Jonathan Gharraie has an essay in the Paris Review on Meryn Peake's Gormenghast books.

Reviews

- David Reynolds' Mightier than the Sword; review by Drew Gilpin Faust in TNR.

- Catherine McKinley's Indigo; review by Alice Wyllie in the Scotsman.

- David Lodge's A Man of Parts; reviews by Christopher Benfey in the NYTimes and Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Jim Lehrer's Tension City; review by Jeff Shesol in the WaPo.

- David Roberts' Finding Everett Ruess; review by Jessica Gelt in the LATimes.

Auction Report: 1-15 September

- PBA's Rare Books & Manuscripts sale on 8 September saw the archive of letters and documents from the family of Benjamin O’Fallon sell by private treaty prior to the sale (a very good thing). Of the 136 remaining lots, just 82 founds buyers. The only lot among the expected high spots which made a price approaching its estimate was the first octavo edition of McKenney and Hall, which made $14,400. The first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in a fine binding sold for $6,600. A manuscript Koran from ~1796 was the surprise top seller, fetching $18,000.

- At Bloomsbury's Conjuring & Circus: Books, Prints, Posters and Apparatus sale on 8 September, the top sellers were a set of plated silver cups which originally belonged to famous 19th-century magician Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser; and an 1882 painting of a tavern featuring a conjurer doing tricks. Both made £10,000.

- Heritage Auctions Historical Manuscripts sale made a total of $995,959.81, with the military archive of Henry Burbeck fetching the highest price: $113,525. The John Adams letter to John Jay failed to find a buyer [Update: Joe Fay from Heritage writes to say the letter was withdrawn prior to the sale], as did the 9 May 1754 "Join, or die" Pennsylvania Gazette (which, as of this morning, you can "Buy now" for $59,750 - not a bad deal, actually). The Rare Books sale brought in a total of $889,753.23, with Galileo's Dialogo (1632) at the top of the list; it sold for $65,725. A presentation copy of Darwin's The Different Forms of Flowers (1877) and the first edition Book of Mormon both sold for $48,800. The Aitken Bible didn't sell.

- Watch for my full report on the Swann Galleries sale of the first part of Eric Caren's How History Unfolds on Paper collection in the fall Fine Books & Collections. The sale was held on on 15 September, and saw 300 of 355 lots sell. Charles II's commission to Edmund Andros to take possession of New York sold for $120,000; a rare first American broadside copy of the famous diagram of the slave ship Brooks made $14,400; a copy of William Hubbard's A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England (1677) fetched $24,000 and two fragments of what may be the first printing job done in New York did not sell. An 1866 baseball scorecard made $36,000.

- Also on 15 September, Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile Sale, in 417 lots. Full results (with no lot making more than £1,200).

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what arrived this week:

- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (Visual Editions, 2011). Amazon. Edition info.

- The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios by Eric Rasmussen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Publisher.

- Signing Their Rights Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese (Quirk Books, 2012). Publisher.

- Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style by Mark Garvey  (Touchstone, 2007). Amazon.

- Verdi's Shakespeare: Men of the Theater by Garry Wills (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

Book Review: "Scorch City"

I absolutely loved Toby Ball's 2010 debut The Vaults (my review), and I'm incredibly pleased to report that his followup novel, Scorch City (St. Martin's Press, 2011) does anything but disappoint.

We find ourselves back in Ball's "City" in the summer of 1950 some fifteen years after the events of The Vaults. Political, religious, and racial tensions have come to a roiling boil, pitting the black Uhuru Community, perhaps allied with Communist sympathizers, against the virulent anti-Communists of the City, whose numbers include not a few members of the police force.

Investigative reporter Frank Frings and detective Piet Westermann are called upon by the Community's leaders to simply move a murder victim's body so that suspicions won't fall upon innocents, but of course doing so sets into motion a series of unexpected consequences that could lead to the end of the City itself.

Once again Ball's put together a cast of memorable characters, none entirely good and none without their own motivations and concerns.

Dark, gritty, and absolutely riveting. I had a difficult time doing anything else once I started reading.

Book Review: "Stealing Rembrandts"

Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), co-written by Anthony Amore (head of security at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) and Tom Mashberg (a longtime Boston Herald reporter who's written extensively on the 1990 Gardner heist) chronicles a few (really, just a few) of the many thefts of Rembrandt artworks during the 20th and early 21st centuries.

I'd have expected something a little less workmanlike from this duo; I've read many of Mashberg's articles about the Gardner case, and this has little of the liveliness evident in much of that earlier journalism. And it's a shame that the Gardner story (which involved the theft of three Rembrandts!) is relegated to passing mentions throughout the text, since who better to write about that particular theft than these two?

Don't get me wrong: the cases Amore and Mashberg do profile are certainly worth the attention, and they make for fascinating stories. The interviews with those behind a few of the heists alone make this a book worth reading, although simply printing long excerpts from the interviews might not have been the best approach. The historical background on Rembrandt's life, practices, artistic circle and the ongoing attribution scholarship are well integrated into the text.

The takeaways from the book are that thefts of masterpieces rarely turn out well for the thieves: in today's market there really simply isn't an easy way to sell them on, and keeping them long term tends to just result in damage to the artwork.

Another easy improvement would have been the addition of more pictures: eight pages of black and whites, which don't even include reproductions of all the Rembrandts higlighted in the text, was simply disappointing.

Overall: could have been significantly better.

Links & Reviews

Either it was a reasonably quiet week or I wasn't paying enough attention (probably the latter).

- JSTOR announced this week that ~500,000 articles from 200 journals (pre-1923 in the US, pre-1870 from other countries) will be made freely available.

- I'll just second Sim's comments on the current Rare Book School fundraising campaign. Give if you're able.

- Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart died at the age of 64. NYTimes Obit.

Reviews


- Andrew Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Simon Garfield's Just my Type; review by Wes Bausmith in the LATimes.

- Nigel Cliff's Holy War; review by Eric Ormsby in the NYTimes.

- Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit; review by Alana Samuels in the LATimes.

- Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen; review by Adam Tschorn in the LATimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

No new books this week, but the first issue of the new McSweeney's food magazine Lucky Peach arrived.

Book Review: "Midnight Rising"

Tony Horwitz's new book Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (Henry Holt, 2011) is rather different from his previous works, in that he doesn't alternate the narrative between past and present but focuses on the historical event: John Brown's attack on the Harpers Ferry arsenal in October 1859. When I first realized this, I confess I was a little bit bummed (I liked that aspect of those earlier books), but I'm more than pleased to say that this is an excellent book, very probably the best account of the raid we're likely to get.

Horwitz offers up not only a detailed, even riveting play-by-play of the assault itself, but also several chapters on Brown's earlier life and exploits. He explores, at great depth than several other recent Brown biographers have done, the strong links between Brown and his key northern backers (as well as the widely varying reactions of those backers following the raid). And he's done a very nice job of profiling Brown's comrades-in-arms, bringing their stories into the mix in a way I've not seen done before.

My favorite part of the book were the aftermath chapters, covering the reaction to Brown's attack in the northern and southern press, by government officials at the federal and state levels, abolitionist leaders, and those who actually knew Brown and his men or supported his efforts. Horwitz has done a brilliant job of recreating how Brown's capture, trial, and execution were perceived by those actually living the events.

No matter how much you think you know about John Brown and his actions, I guarantee you'll learn something from this book, and that you'll enjoy the read. Highly recommended.

Book Review: "Lost States"

Michael Trinklein's very amusing Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and other States that Never Made It (Quirk Books, 2010) profiles a bunch of states that might have been, complete with contextual maps, short explantations, and entertaining tidbits aboout the proposals.

Many of the "lost states" fall into one of several types: territories which the U.S. either controls now or controlled at one time, separatist movements within existing states, different plans for boundaries of existing states (basically different ways to slice up territories), or far-fetched schemes to annex all or parts of other countries (there are entries here for Albania, Great Britain, Guyana, and Taiwan, for example).

While I'm not sure I would have included a few of these, Trinklein makes a good case for each, and I really liked the maps he designed for them (also, the dust jacket unfolds into a poster-sized map, if you're into that sort of thing). The tone is light, and that's perfectly okay.

Quirky, and great fun.

Links & Reviews

Sorry for the delay this week; no internet connection this morning meant I got some reading done.

- The September Fine Books Notes is out, featuring an interview with longtime Americana dealer Norman Kane, a piece on Yukon maps, recent auction highlights, and more.

- Also up, this month's Americana Exchange Monthly, which looks ahead to some of the fall's auctions, profiles Vic Zoschak's reference workshops, &c.

- Steve Ferguson's got a mustn't-miss post up about Elkanah Settle's presentation bindings.

- Ed Pettit's going to devote 2012 to reading all of Dickens' works: follow along here, or on Twitter at @ReadingDickens.

- The NYTimes covered what seems to be a diminished market for mass-market paperback editions of books.

- On NPR this week, Simon Garfield talked about his new book Just my Type.

- In the September Believer, Paul Collins writes on a very odd trend in late-50s-model Chrysler cars: hi-fi turnstables!

- At The Collation, Jim Kuhn's begun a series of posts on various handy Folger Library tools with an introduction; start following along!

- Lev Grossman writes in the NYT's "The Mechanic Muse" column about scrolls, codices, and e-reading.

- In case you missed it this week, check out 60 Minutes with Shakespeare, in which 60 scholars talk for a minute (or so) apiece about som aspect of Shakespeare and the "authorship controversy." And for more Shakespeare on the radio, check out Folger curator Owen Williams and editor Barbara Mowat's appearance on the Kojo Nmandi show.

I didn't see any particularly noteworthy reviews this week.

Book Review: "Then Everything Changed"

Even though I don't write about it too much here, I'm something of a politics junkie by nature, and I also happen to love some well-informed speculative writing, so when I learned that Jeff Greenfield had written Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011) the book went right on the "must read" list.

Putting his many years of political reporting and experience to good use, Greenfield has taken three "turning points" and spun out the longterm scenarios of what might have happened had things gone differently. As he writes in the preface, "what would have happened if small twists of fate had given us different leaders, with different beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses? I've tried here to answer that question by exploring, in dramatic narrative form, complete with characters, thoughts, and dialogue, a trio of contemporary alternate American histories, all flowing from events that came a mere hairsbreadth away from actually happening" (p. xii).

What if a suicide bomber had killed JFK outside his house in December, 1960, before the electors had cast their ballots? What if RFK hadn't been shot in June, 1968, just after winning the California primary? What if Gerald Ford had recovered from a crucial gaffe during a 1976 debate, and won reelection? Greenfield outlines what the next years and decades might have looked like under those circumstances. While some of the conclusions may seem implausible, far-fetched, or even silly, I'm hard pressed to say that any of Greenfield's flights of fancy are any less likely than some of the actual things we've seen in our politics over the last few decades.

From what he writes in the Acknowledgments, it would appear that Greenfield had been contracted to write a novel (he'd done an earlier one for Putnam). I'm glad that he ended up writing this book instead, and I certainly hope he had as much fun writing it as I had reading it. I absolutely loved the arcana he delved into, from the complicated mechanics of Democratic primary delegate math to the vice-presidential calculations of the 1980 candidates. If you get as excited about these things as I do, go out and buy this book, and read it closely.

Book Review: "Tides of War"

Historian Stella Tillyard makes her debut as a novelist with Tides of War (Henry Holt, 2011), a thoroughly satisfying story of the Peninsular Wars both on the battlefront and the home front.

Integrating fictional characters with historical personages and real settings, and alternating sections of chapters between London and the Spanish front, Tillyard manages to curate a vast, detailed plot into a readable whole. Clearly her knowledge of the historical context was put to good use in the deployment of key details and various elements of the plot (in which a field doctor experiments with blood transfusions, and we witness the development of early gas lighting attempts and the beginnings of the Rothschild banking empire).

While it took me little while to get into the book, and I found myself drawn more to several of the minor characters than to the headliners of the novel, no real matter. It ended up being a good read, and I'll certainly watch for Tillyard's next (which I suspect may feature at least a few of the same cast).

This Week's Acquisitions

New arrivals:

- Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock (Simon & Schuster, 2010). Forgotten Bookmarks (watch their site and Twitter for giveaways of some great titles).

- Ethan Allen: His Life and Times by Willard Sterne Randall (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011). Publisher.

- Scorch City by Toby Ball (St. Martin's Press, 2011). Publisher.

- Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 2011). Publisher.

- Sanctus by Simon Toyne (William Morrow, 2011). Publisher.

- Reamde by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow, 2011). Publisher.

Book Review: "Chatterton"

A complicated meditation on literary reality and originality, forgery and fakery, Peter Ackoyd's Chatterton (Grove Press, 1996) combines a trio of narratives: in the present day, failed poet Charles Lutwyche finds a portrait and papers suggesting Thomas Chatterton might not have actually killed himself in 1770; in the 1850s, painter Henry Wallis uses poet George Meredith as his model for Chatterton's death scene; and Chatterton himself, over the course of his short (or was it?) life.

As Lutwyche investigates his discoveries, he accidentally finds that his sometime employer, novelist Harriet Scrope, might have done a little "borrowing" in a couple of his own novels, adding another dimension to Ackroyd's treatment.

While many of the characters are rather forgettable, and the Wallis/Meredith section doesn't work quite as well as it might, overall I liked the playful complexity of the novel, and one of the sub-plots (featuring Lutwyche's sometime employer, novelist Harriet Scrope) was great fun.

Auction Preview: September

- PBA Galleries hosts a Rare Books & Manuscripts sale on 8 September, in 185 lots. The top-estimated lot is a complete set of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, each signed by King and the artist (estimated at $15,000-20,000). A first octavo edition of McKenney and Hall also rates a $15,000-25,000 estimate; a "true first" edition of Cooper's Water Witch (Dresden, 1830) is estimated at $10,000-15,000, as is a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in a fine binding. Lots 137-185 in this auction include an archive of letters and documents from the family of Benjamin O’Fallon (1793-1842), Indian Agent for the United States on the Missouri.

- Bloomsbury's got a Conjuring & Circus: Books, Prints, Posters and Apparatus sale on 8 September, in 729 lots.

- Heritage Auctions is selling Historical Manuscripts and Rare Books on 13-14 September in Beverly Hills. The key lot in the manuscripts bunch is the 9 May 1754 Pennsylvania Gazette, containing the first instance of Franklin's "Join, or die" cartoon. It's estimated at $100,000-200,000. A July 1788 John Adams letter to John Jay concerning ratification of the Constitution rates a $40,000-60,000 estimate. Among the books, there's a first edition Book of Mormon (est. $80,000+) and an Aitken Bible (est. $40,000+).

- Swann Galleries will sell Part I of Eric Caren's How History Unfolds on Paper collection on 15 September, in 355 lots. Watch for my profile of this sale in the next issue of FB&C. Highlights include Charles II's commission to Edmund Andros to take possession of New York (est. $100,000-150,000); a rare first American broadside copy of the famous diagram of the slave ship Brooks (est. $15,000-25,000); a copy of William Hubbard's A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England (1677; est. $25,000-35,000) and two fragments of what may be the first printing job done in New York (est. $8,000-12,000).

- Also on 15 September, Bloomsbury holds a Bibliophile Sale, in 417 lots.

- On 22 September, Bloosmbury London sells the Cetus Library: Food & Drink, Agriculture, Gardening and Social History, 1543-1829, in 425 lots.

- Christie's London will hold a Travel, Science and Natural History sale on 29 September. More info to follow.

Book Review: "The Ballad of Tom Dooley"

Sharyn McCrumb's latest novel is The Ballad of Tom Dooley (St. Martin's, 2011), a fictional examination of the actual events which inspired the famous song (whose real-life title character was named Dula, not Dooley). McCrumb's tale is told through the narratives of Pauline Foster (cousin and hired girl of Tom Dula's married lover Ann Melton) and Zebulon Vance (former governor of North Carolina and lawyer for Dula and Melton in their trials for the killing of Laura Foster).

I didn't know there was such a fascinating backstory there to be worked with, and give McCrumb much credit for how she's spun a readable, elegant story out of the case. While we may not ever be able to know whether the scenario she lays out is precisely what happened, it seems, as she notes, just as plausible as any other.

Perhaps it would have been worthwhile to add another perspective or two into the mix: Pauline works well, but perhaps including James Melton (Ann's husband) might have been useful too (Vance's vantage point is interesting, but somewhat removed from the actual events at hand). Nonetheless, it's neat to see original historical research brought to bear here and an imaginative reconstruction of what led to the death of Laura Foster and the hanging of Tom Dula.

Book Review: "The Technologists"

I've been a fan of Matthew Pearl's novels from the get-go; while I always have a hard time picking "favorite" books, The Dante Club would certainly make any list of top novels I've read. I'm very happy to say that his newest, The Technologists (due in early 2012 from Random House) is another big win.

Set in 1868 Boston, the novel opens with a series of terrifying attacks on the city's commercial infrastructure: compasses on ships in the harbor suddenly malfunctioning simultaneously, window-glass in the business district spontaneously dissolving ... and the events seem likely to continue unless someone can figure out who's behind them.

And just who does Pearl assign to figure out how to save Boston from further attacks? Departing from his earlier trio of novels, it's not a major literary figure, but rather three young men, seniors at the nascent Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plus Ellen Swallow, the first female student at MIT. Facing off against a motley crew of MIT's opponents (including some rowdy trade unionists, Harvard's Louis Agassiz, and a mysterious hooded figure calling himself the "avenging angel,"), the unlikely quartet (who dub themselves "The Technologists") must break some rules in order to protect themselves, their school, and their city.

Pearl's captured the tensions of post-Civil War Boston beautifully, and told the story of MIT's genesis and early years very nicely. The conflicts between those who supported MIT's mission of practical scientific education and those who saw this as a dangerous trend were real, and The Technologists brings that to life in a way that I'm not sure a historian could.

I greatly enjoyed the richly-drawn characters, the pace, the plot, the setting - this is the real deal, a thrilling read that I wanted more of. All I can say is, keep up the good work!

Book Review: "Those Across the River"

If you're in search of a really creepy book (one which I wouldn't suggest trying to read right before bed), give Christopher Buehlman's debut a try. Those Across the River (Ace, 2011) is the story of washed-up academic and WWI veteran Frank Nichols, who takes possession of a family house he's inherited in the backwoods town of Whitbrow. Nichols decides he'll write a book about the ancestor whose plantation had been in the neighborhood, believed murdered at the hands of his own slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War.

But Whitbrow's not the quiet river hamlet it seems to be; there's something out there (yes, it's across the river), and Frank's arrival sets into motion a chain of events with dramatic consequences for the entire town.

An eerie page-turner with its fair share of unexpected plot twists, interesting characters, and an unconventional and unexpected explanation.

Links & Reviews

Irene's winds and rains have begun to move into Portland overnight, although we're not expected to see the worst of it until this afternoon and evening. So today will be a day for hunkering down and getting some serious reading done, with any luck at all. Meanwhile, here's what happened this week:

- The book world received the very sad news this week that longtime Rare Book School faculty member and world's expert on 19th-century American publishers' bindings Sue Allen passed away after a short illness. She was 93. I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Sue at RBS this summer, and was immediately struck by her generosity, kindness, and expertise. She will be greatly missed.

- That volume of Harbottle Dorr's annotated newspapers I mentioned recently sold at auction this week for a total of $345,000. The buyer was, as I'd hoped it might be, the Massachusetts Historical Society, which holds the other three volumes. The purchase was made possible by gifts from anonymous donors. Coverage in the Portland Press-Herald, or see the MHS press release.

- From The Collation (a new Folger blog that you should be reading), Steven Galbraith writes about this summer's re-evaluation of the number of First Folios in the Folger's collection (now being counted as 82 rather than 79). A fascinating look at the process behind this.

- In the NYTimes, Geoff Dyer writes about "what we do to books" (by which he seems to mean that he beats up on his pretty hard).

- Peter Ackroyd has embarked on a six-volume history of England, the first volume of which will be published in the UK next month. He says in a Telegraph essay that he's taking Gibbon and Macaulay as his models, and wants to "address the general public and introduce to them the long story of England."

- Author and historian Deborah Harkness talked to Humanities Magazine about her historical research, animated pies, and how she came to write her recent novel A Discovery of Witches. She also answers (and correctly, too), that age-old question "Footnote or endnote?"

- The Google Book Search blog had a post this week in honor of what would have been Jorge Luis Borges' 112th birthday, putting their Ngram viewer to good use.

- At Anchora, Adam Hooks examines examples of blank A1 leaves (which gradually begin to turn into half-title pages during the later part of the 17th century) in the Iowa collections (he found six neat examples).

- From Antipodean Footnotes, a very nifty discovery: printed prospectuses for an edition of Johnson's Dictionary have been found in the binding of a copy of the 1785 folio edition of the Dictionary.

- Skinner has posted a preview of their November Books & Manuscripts sale; highlights will include a manuscript draft petition calling for passage of the 13th Amendment, a George Washington letter about a house in D.C., and a Lincoln letter to Massachusetts Governor John Andrew (not Andrews) about the defense of Boston Harbor. The sale will be held on 13 November.

- Over on PW's ShelfTalker blog, Elizabeth Bluemie asks "Is the Personal Library Doomed?"

- This week's earthquake caused minor structural damage at the National Archives Records Center in Suitland, MD, but the damage did not seriously affect any records.

- Yale will work with the National Library of Korea to digitize some 140 rare Korean works from the Yale collectios.

- I quite like the most recent William Reese Co. bulletin, titled "Evidence" [PDF]

- Unabridged Chick has an interview with David Liss about his new novel The Twelfth Enchantment (which may well become one of the books I take up this afternoon for hurricane reading).

- Files released this week by the UK National Archives reveal that MI5 briefly investigated P.G. Wodehouse as a possible Nazi collaborator for making radio broadcasts from WWII Berlin.

- From the Edinburgh book festival, Ewan Morrison's argument about the future of publishing and authorship is well worth a read.

- Stepanie Williams writes about her new book Running the Show: Governors of the British Empire in the Telegraph.

- Menachem Youlus, who set up the Save a Torah charity in 2004 to rescue Torahs supposedly lost in the Holocaust, has been charged with mail and wire fraud; prosecutors say he bilked the charity out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and lied about where he "rescued" certain Torahs (in some cases having simply purchased them from dealers).

- A 15th-century illuminated lectionary has been returned to St. Kieran's College; it had apparently made its way to the National Library of Ireland in the 1960s and been catalogued into the library's collections.

- Berlin's library will return some 70 books stolen from the German Social Democratic Party during the 1930s, including Engels' copy of The Communist Manifesto. The return is part of an ongoing project to give back books stolen from Jewish and other political organizations during the Nazi years.

Reviews

- James Pennebaker's The Secret Life of Pronouns; reviews by Ben Zimmer in the NYTimes and Dennis Drabelle in the WaPo.

- Lev Grossman's The Magician King; review by Dan Kois in the NYTimes.

- Robert Booth's Death of an Empire; review by Michael Kenney in the Boston Globe.

- Simon Garfield's Just my Type; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.

- Maeve Gilmore/Mervyn Peake's Titus Awakes; review by Michael Moorcock in the LATimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

Some review copies this week, plus visits to the Portland shops last weekend and the closing Borders on Monday. Still quite a bit of good stuff there for the snagging!

- Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti (Vintage Books, 2010). Longfellow Books.

- One Man's Meat by E. B. White (Atlantic Books, 1997). Longfellow Books.

- Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). Longfellow Books.

- The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (Puffin Books, 2000). Green Hand.

- Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century by April Lee Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Borders, Portland.

- Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer by David Roberts (Broadway, 2011). Borders, Portland.

- Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World by Sam W. Haynes (University of Virginia Press, 2010). Borders, Portland.

- Black Hills by Dan Simmons (Reagan Arthur Books, 2011). Borders, Portland.

- Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam Adult, 2011). Borders, Portland.

- The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor (Knopf, 2010). Borders, Portland.

- Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993 by Paul Bowles (Ecco, 2011). Publisher.

- The Pilgrim by Hugh Nissenson (Sourcebooks, 2011). Publisher.

- Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists by Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Publisher.

Book Review: "The Magician King"

It's not all that often that I like a sequel better than the original, but I'd rate Lev Grossman's The Magician King (Viking, 2011) a little bit higher than its predecessor, The Magicians. Some of the unresolved issues from the last book get tightened up here, and Grossman continues to draw on and allude to a wide range of fantasy fiction for his plot motifs, themes, and characters. It's great fun to read these books and try to pick out what he's alluding to.

This isn't a perfect book; the series still feels like it's missing something, although I can't quite put my finger on just what it is. The main, save-the-world, "quest" plot here seemed somehow too simple, even though twists and turns managed to find their way in; the alternating chapters provided some key backstory which went unexplained in the previous volume (and were, I thought, the strongest part of the book).

Grossman's brand of fantasy is grittier than most, which makes it interesting - that, along with the enjoyment I get from trying to figure out what's influencing his writing, will keep me reading future books in the series.

Links & Reviews

- 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!).

- In today's NYTimes, David Streitfeld looks at the growth industry of pay-for-review schemes.

- 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.

Book Review: "The Murder of the Century"

I've made no secret over the years just how much I enjoy Paul Collins' books, and his latest is no exception: The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars (Crown, 2011) is another home run. The tale of the gruesome 1897 murder of New York masseuse William Guldensuppe by his (married) paramour Augusta Nack and her paramour Martin Thorn captivated New York for months, and Collins recounts the events as they happened, drawing on the extensive coverage in New York City's newspapers, police records, and other sources.

Collins offers a wide-angle view of the Guldensuppe case, delving deeply into the crime, the investigation, and the trials of the perpetrators. By doing so, he offers the possibility of looking at the extent to which the newspapers (particularly William Randolph Hearst's Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's World) played a key role in discovering evidence (or following leads which led to its discovery), influencing public opinion, and keeping interest in the case (and their increased circulation) alive.

A brilliant recreation of all aspects of this captivating, nasty crime and its aftermath.

Book Review: "Definitely Not Mr. Darcy"

Karen Doornebos' debut novel Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (Berkley, 2011) is a humorous (even ridiculous, but in a good way) parody of the 19th-century sentimental novel. Set in the present, it sees Austen enthusiast Chloe Parker (a down-on-her-luck American letterpress printer) heading across the pond for what she thinks is the filming of a documentary on Austen's life and works, but is in reality a dating show (set, naturally, in 1812). Chloe must navigate the dangerous shoals of Regency-era clothing, etiquette, and communications technology while fending off more-accomplished rivals and competing in various tasks to give her a leg up in the dating contest.

Revivifying many of the sentimental tropes, motifs and plot techniques that Austen herself deployed, Doornebos has written a book that succeeded in making me laugh without leading to (very many) eye-rolls (the bachelor prize is named Mr. Wrightman, after all). Silly? Yes. Predictable? You bet. Entertaining? Indeed.

This Week's Acquisitions

Mostly review copies this week, plus a few deals I couldn't pass up.

- Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (Riverhead, 2011). Publisher.

- Definitely Not Mr. Darcy by Karen Doornebos (Berkley, 2011). Publisher.

- An Account of Denmark: With Francogallia & Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture & Employing the Poor by Robert Molesworth (Liberty Fund, 2011). Publisher.

- The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland; edited by Peter Hoare (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Publisher.

- Tristram Shandy (Norton Critical Editions) by Laurence Sterne (Norton, 1986). Amazon.

- The Magician King by Lev Grossman (Viking, 2011). Amazon.

- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk, 2011). Amazon.

- The Technologists by Matthew Pearl (Random House, 2012). Publisher.

Followup on Landau Thefts

The Baltimore Sun, which has been doing a very decent job covering the Barry Landau/Jason Savedoff thefts, has another followup piece today about the aftermath of the theft discoveries at the various institutions the duo seem to have hit.

Landau was released from prison last week and allowed to return to his Manhattan apartment, under electronic surveillance. The Sun reports that Landau is "barred from accessing the Internet, cannot keep his passport, can have no contact with museums, can't sell assets without approval and can't have any communication with his co-defendant, Jason Savedoff." Prosecutors had sought to portray Landau as a flight risk and urged a judge not to release him lest he destroy evidence against him, but a judge disagreed.

Landau's accomplice, Jason Savedoff, is reportedly cooperating with prosecutors, and government lawyers have suggested that additional charges against the pair are possible, since "thousands" of documents, some already identified as being from the collections of a variety of institutions in the US and Britain were removed from Landau's apartment.

Book Review: "Lionheart"

It's been quite a while since I've read one of Sharon Kay Penman's historical novels, but I was happy to see Lionheart (Putnam, 2011), the first of a two-volume series about Richard I. The book, hefty like most of the author's others, treats the events before and during the Third Crusade (1189-1192); the next installment, A King's Ransom, will cover the aftermath. Previous titles provide some backstory, though it's certainly not absolutely necessary to read them first.

I like the details Penman adds to her novels; it's obvious that she's taken the time to really dig into the sources (and in fact she quotes from several contemporary chronicles throughout the book), and her author's note at the end does a great job of outlining the (reasonable) liberties she took in writing the book.

Aside from just a few points where I thought there was a bit too much historical exposition stuffed into the dialogue, with characters explaining things to each other that they'd likely not have had cause to do, this made for a good story and an extremely enjoyable read.

Book Review: "Nightwoods"

Charles Frazier's third novel is Nightwoods (Random House, 2011), a rich Appalachian tale told with clear prose and a fair helping of suspense. Our main character is Luce, a woman living on the outskirts of a small isolated North Carolina town whose world is changed mightily with the arrival of Frank and Dolores, the orphaned young children of her murdered sister. Luce faces quite a challenge connecting with this pair of traumatized youngsters, whose arsonist and, shall we say deconstructionist tendencies cause no end of problems.

With plenty of trouble on her hands, Luce certainly doesn't need what comes next: her sister's acquitted murderer, eager to find something of his which he suspects might be wherever the children are. And then there's the heir of her former employer, the new owner of the abandoned lodge where she lives as the caretaker; he's arrived too, and (naturally) sparks fly.

A fast read, mainly because it's difficult to put down; I wanted to know what came next, even if it was going to make me squirm (and it did, a few times). Frazier's written a dark but hopeful novel, both funny and heart-wrenching at times.

Book Review: "A Dance with Dragons"

Over the course of the spring I reread the first four volumes of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (well, reread the first three and read the fourth for the first time) so that I'd be able to pick up the fifth volume, A Dance with Dragons, when it came out in July. I was a bit delayed in that, but I've now finished up ADWD. This installment begins with the same chronological period covered in the previous book but from the perspective of different characters, but toward the end, as Martin notes at the outset, the two streams converge again.

The several major plot points of the series grind slowly forward in this volume, which barely references any of the major cliffhangers from the last book (and ends with more than a few of its own). There are so many little points and questions I have about what's happening to one character or another that it was frustrating to read a book of nearly 1,000 pages and not get some of those answers, but one lives in hope that the next volume might finally bring resolution to some of lingering plot threads.

What I love about these books is the realpolitik, the debts-must-be-paid grittiness of the world Martin has built. When a thousand pages isn't enough to satisfy me and leaves me wanting just another few chapters, I know I've just read a good book. Frustrating it may be, but I'll be waiting impatiently for my next chance to shiver at the Wall.

Links & Reviews

- On 25 August one of four volumes of Harbottle Dorr's collection of early American newspapers will be sold at auction in Maine. The volume is from the collections of the Bangor Historical Society; the other three are at the Massachusetts Historical Society. From the Kennebec Journal article on the upcoming sale: "Lippitt [Dana Lippitt, the curator] said the Bangor Historical Society's board considered a private sale to the Massachusetts Historical Society to complete its collection. 'That's where we'd prefer they end up,' Lippitt said. But the need for the most money possible convinced board members to put the newspapers up for auction." This is incredibly unfortunate, and not the way decisions about our cultural heritage should be made. I seriously hope that an institution is able to obtain the volume, so that it doesn't end up in the hands of a dealer and get broken up for piecemeal sale.

- It had been expected, but the news nonetheless is sad: the British Museum closed the Paul Hamlyn Library on Friday

- From The Cataloguer's Desk, Laura Massey looks at a fascinating example of forgery, fakery, and false provenance in a 1793 copy of Shakespeare Illustrated.

- In the Chronicle this week, an excerpt from Alan Jacobs' recent book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.

- This week J.L. Bell looked at two recent books which maintain the American Revolution was a mistake. First post; second post.

- NPR Books got a facelift this week.

- A.N. Devers writes about the trials and tribulations of Poe's houses, for The Book Bench.

- David Orr has an essay in the NYTBR on George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and how it's reshaping modern fantasy. I'm greatly enjoying my trip through A Dance with Dragons just now! And speaking of fantasy, The Millions has an interview with Lev Grossman, whose The Magician King was released this month.

- Frida Kahlo's annotated copy of Poe's works, which includes handwritten notes, paintings, and collage, sold for $24,400 at auction in Chicago this week.

- At EMOB, Eleanor Shevlin looks at open access and subscription databases, using the Aaron Swartz case as a jumping-off point.

- Another interesting take on crowdsourcing from the photo archive Magnum, which combines social networking and gaming with photo identification.

- Very glad to see that the Providence Public Library's Occasional Nuggets publication will continue!

- James McAuley talks to Maya Jasanoff about her book Liberty's Exiles, which I enjoyed very much earlier this spring.

- From the NYT's Disunion blog, a look at James Garfield's early career and entry into the Civil War.

- Perhaps not new (I'm not sure) but Harvard in the 17th and 18th Century is a fantastically detailed guide to the holdings of Harvard's archives on a wide variety of topics.

- An employee of Hartford's Mark Twain house admitted to embezzling more than $1 million from the museum's coffers.

- Over at 8vo, a look at Innerpeffray's lending library, the oldest in Scotland. Great pictures and background!

- A copy of the 9 May 1754 Pennsylvania Gazette, containing Ben Franklin's famous "Join or Die" political cartoon, will be sold at Heritage Auctions in September, with an estimate of $100,000-200,000 (which may be rather low).

- Slate asks a series of authors, editors and critics to name the "great books" they think are most overrated. I quite like, and strongly agree with, Elif Batuman's comment: "My view is that the right book has to reach you at the right time, and no person can be reached by every book. Literature is supposed to be beautiful and/or necessary—so if at a given time you don't either enjoy or need a certain book, then you should read something else, and not feel guilty about it."

- Bookride looks at some of the best printing errors in history.

- Via @john_overholt, a mini-documentary on marginalia.

- Charles C. Mann talked about his new book 1493 on NPR this week.

- The Paul Fraser Collectibles newsletter has a profile of David Rumsey and his famous map collection.

Reviews

- Brook Wilensky-Lanford's Paradise Lust; review by Laura Collins-Hughes in the Boston Globe.

- Several new editions and works about John Donne; review by Robert Fraser in the TLS.

- Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending; review by Lidija Haas in the TLS.

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what arrived this week:

- The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown, 2011). Amazon.

- Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley (Putnam, 2007). Amazon.

- A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (Bantam, 2011). Amazon.

- The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss (Random House, 2011). Publisher.

- Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings by Alison Weir (Ballantine, 2011). Publisher.

- Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt, 2011). Publisher.

- Justin Winsor: Scholar-Librarian; edited by Wayne Cutler and Michael Harris (Libraries Unlimited, 1980). ABE.

Happy Fortsas Day!

Today marks the 171st anniversary of the Fortsas Hoax, still the greatest biblio-hoax ever! For background on the hoax, and links to the Comte's library catalog, see my post from the 168th anniversary back in '08.

Book Review: "Ex Libris"

Ex Libris: The Art of Bookplates (Yale University Press, 2011) presents a selection of 100 pictorial bookplates (some never before published) from the collections of the British Museum. Edited by Martin Hopkinson, the former Curator of Prints at the University of Glasgow's Hunterian Art Gallery, the book is a fine example of excellent design: each of the bookplates (or bookplate designs) is reproduced beautifully and accompanied by a short contextual caption covering the artist, owner, style and symbolism of the plate.

If I had to lodge an objection it would be with the coverage: all but six of the hundred bookplates are from the period 1875-1930, and almost all are English. Given the British Museum's extensive collections I'm sure there are some wonderful things from outside that narrow chronological and geographic range that might have made the cut. As Hopkinson notes, though, it's a small book and doesn't attempt comprehensiveness; given the limitations, he's chosen an impressive and varied selection.

Overall, a lovely book, highlighting some great bookplate designs and artists.

Book Review: "Edward Bancroft"

With Edward Bancroft: Scientist, Author, Spy (Yale University Press, 2011) Thomas J. Schaeper finally offers up a full-length biography of Bancroft, one of the most successful Revolutionary War "secret agents," whose role as a spy wasn't known until the late 1880s. But, Schaeper argues persuasively, there's more to Bancroft than his espionage activities, and there's more depth to those than previous historians have written.

This is a masterful book. Schaeper has done what far too many of his predecessors haven't and actually taken the time to look at the documentary evidence and its context(s). By doing so he's able to offer a much more balanced look at Bancroft's role as a British agent within the American mission in France during the Revolution, gauging the impact of Bancroft's efforts in a considered way. He painstakingly rebuts many of the more outrageous claims that have been made about Bancroft's spy career (by Julian Boyd among others), and is able to offer a much more evenhanded and accurate treatment of Bancroft's efforts within the larger British intelligence operation (such as it was).

While the re-evaluation of Bancroft's motivations and impact would be more than enough, Schaeper also widens the view and takes in Bancroft's entire career, as an entrepreneur (who knew that he was involved with the dye industry?), an author (of not only an important natural history of Guiana but also a 1770 novel, The History of Charles Wentworth), and as the widowed father of several young children. Schaeper provides much-needed perspective by putting Bancroft's spying period into context as a reasonably short episode in his long life.

Offering a close and cautious reading of the available sources, and by carefully noting the limits of the documents that have come down to us, Schaeper has given us a book that is historical scholarship at its best. Highly recommended.

Links & Reviews

- Kari Kraus has an important piece in the NYTimes today, "When Data Disappears."

- Another must-read from this week is Sarah Werner's post "the serendipity of the unexpected, or, a copy is not an edition."

- I've added a sidebar link to 8vo, Brook Palmieri's excellent biblio-blog. Add this one to your rotation. Her most recent post, on a really delightful provenance discovery, builds on Sarah's (just linked to above).

- In the Boston Globe, a look at the new 18th-century-style print shop recently opened in the North End.

- From the Guardian this week, a look at a new Dickens project, Dickens Journals Online. The aim is to produce an online, open-access edition of Household Worlds and All the Year Round, and they're looking for volunteers!

- The August Fine Books Notes is out: it includes a special report by Catherine Batac Walder on the Reibenbach Falls area, Nick Basbanes on the new fourth edition of Allen and Patricia Ahearns' Collected Books, and more.

- There's a new digital library of books published in Mexico before 1601, Primeros Libros.

- A fascinating long piece by Simon Kuper on the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

- Somebody on Twitter (sorry, I've forgotten now just who) posted a link to audio of Jorge Luis Borges' 1967-1968 Norton Lectures at Harvard.

- Bloomsbury Auctions has been acquired by Fine Art Auction Group.

- In the NYTimes, Eve Kahn writes about the difficulties of scrapbook preservation.

- Rick Anderson has a fascinating post at the scholarly kitchen on the "good, the bad, and the sexy" of the Espresso Book Machine.

Reviews

- David Pearson's Books as History; review by Rebecca Rego Barry in Fine Books Notes.

- Michael Sims' The Story of Charlotte's Web; review by Lee Randall in the Scotsman.

- Melanie Benjamin's The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb; review by Diana White in the Boston Globe.

- Brook Wilensky-Landford's Paradise Lust; review by Andrea Wulf in the NYTimes.

- Other People's Books; review by Pradeep Sebastian in The Hindu.

Book Review: "Cloud Atlas"

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (which I read in the new flipback edition from Hodder & Stoughton) is an imaginative and well-designed novel. Told in six very different sub-novels, each with an extremely different perspective, narrator, time period, and linguistic style, Cloud Atlas proceeds chronologically forward from the 1850s through the distant, post-apocalyptic future with the first half of each sub-novel, and then moves back through time through the second half of each. While the loose connections between the sections seem slightly contrived at times, Mitchell's ability to use a variety of different genres and voices made it well worth the read.

While I enjoyed a couple of the sub-novels better than the others (the series of letters from an ambitious young composer and an elderly British publisher's harebrained escape from his nursing home were my favorites), seeing how the entire work came together was great fun.

Recent Acquisitions

It's been a while since I've posted an arrivals list:

- Ex Libris: The Art of Bookplates by Martin Hopkinson (Yale University Press, 2011). Publisher.

- Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto (Crown, 2011). Publisher.

- Nightwoods by Charles Frazier (Random House, 2011). Publisher.

- The Ballad of Tom Dooley: A Ballad Novel by Sharyn McCrumb (Thomas Dunne Books, 2011). Publisher.

- Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman (Putnam, 2011). Publisher.

- Memorandum on the Folly of Invading Virginia, the Strategic Importance of Portsmouth, and the Need for Civilian Control of the Military; Written in 1781 by the British Negotiator of the First American Treaty of Peace by Richard Oswald (UVA Press, 1953). Book cart.

- The Discoveries of John Lederer, with Unpublished Letters by and about Lederer to Governor John Winthrop, Jr., and an Essay on the Indians of Lederer's Discoveries by Douglas L. Rights and William P. Cumming (UVA Press, 1958). Book cart.

- Notes on the Professors for whom the University of Virginia Halls and Residence Houses are Named by Harry Clemons (UVA Press, 1961). Book cart.

- Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free by John Ferling (Bloomsbury, 2011). Publisher.

- The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds by Richard Crossley (Princeton University Press, 2011). Gift.

- Printed Americana in the Harlan Crow Library: A First Progress Report. With an Annotated Checklist of 250 Books, Pamphlets, and Broadsides Acquired from 2003 to 2009 by Stephen Weissman (Harlan Crow Library, 2010). Gift.

- Exceptional Manuscripts in the Harlan Crow Library by Joe Rubinfine and Ryan Lord (Harlan Crow Library, 2010). Gift.

Landau Accused of More Thefts

The Poughkeepsie Journal reports today that "historian" Barry Landau is now accused of stealing documents from the FDR Presidential Research Library and Museum in Hyde Park, including seven speeches signed by FDR.

A bail hearing for Landau is to be held today; his accomplice, Jason Savedoff, is currently out on $250,000 bail. The pair were indicted by a federal grand jury in Baltimore on 28 July; an FBI press release notes that the indictment covers the thefts from the FDR Library, the New-York Historical Society, and the Maryland Historical Society.

The investigation is ongoing, and I suspect there are more shoes yet to drop.

Book Review: "Caleb's Crossing"

Geraldine Brooks' latest novel is Caleb's Crossing (Viking, 2011), set in 17th-century Massachusetts and taking its inspiration from Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck and Joel Iacommes, two Wampanoag students at Harvard in the 1660s. Narrated by Bethia Mayfield, a young Martha's Vineyard resident who by a rather implausible series of events finds herself with Caleb and Joel in Cambridge as they prepare for their matriculation at Harvard, the novel is a fine if occasionally imperfect treatment.

The best parts of this book were the period details, which mostly came through fine except for the occasional anachronism or linguistic infelicity. The texture and tenor of early Cambridge and the attempts to Christianize the local native societies (with the concomitant tensions) came through well. The rest of the plot seemed just a bit unlikely, and using Bethia's "journal" as a framing device didn't work quite as well as it might have done.

Entirely worth reading overall, even if not quite to the level of Brooks' Year of Wonders (still my favorite of her novels).