The Fine Books Blog

Biblioclasm in Mosul

2015-02-11T15:04:00Z

When innocent people are being slaughtered by ISIS terrorists in the most savage and unspeakable of ways, it is easy to marginalize reports that they are also hauling precious books by the hundreds into the streets of Mosul in northern Iraq and turning them into ashes. The justification given for this latest example of large-scale biblioclasm--by definition, the deliberate destruction of books as a means of eradicating another people--is that it is a systematic initiative bent on "cultural cleansing," which in this instance is the immolation of any books they regard as inimical to their particular interpretation of Islam.

News stories (see also here; and here) of the past couple of weeks have reported that 2,000 volumes were taken from the Central Library of Mosul, including children's stories, poetry, philosophy and books on sports, health, culture and science, and destroyed; only Islamic texts were left behind. A few days later, scientific texts from the University of Mosul library were piled in a heap and set ablaze in front of students. Other accounts report heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library in Mosul, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers, and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 B.C.

Nine years ago this month--this very week, in fact--I traveled to Iraq at the invitation of Lt. Col. Brian McNerney, then a senior public affairs officer with the U.S.Army, now an archivist at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to speak at the dedication of a new library he had just willed into existence at Camp Anaconda in Balad. One of the inducements to my making the trip was his offer to take me to the city of Ur, where one of the civilized world's first gathering of books had been established in Old Testament times, and then to Mosul, where we would visit the nearby archaeological site of the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal in ancient Nineveh. I wrote about the visit to Ur in Fine Books & Collections, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. Unfortunately, we never made it to Mosul; then, as now, it was a very dangerous place--for people, and, it turns out, also for books.

--Nicholas Basbanes is the author, most recently, of On Paper: The Everything of Its Two Thousand Year History.

Image: Browsing titles at a book market in Iraq. ©Larisa Epatko via UNESCO.

In Memoriam, Bookseller and Author Patricia Ahearn

2014-05-30T14:49:15Z

The antiquarian book world lost one of its nicest, most beloved figures this week with the passing of Patricia Ahearn, the wife of Allen Ahearn, her partner for close to forty years at Quill & Brush booksellers of Dickerson, Maryland, one of the nation's leading dealers of modern first editions and literary collectibles, and now in its second generation of family management and ownership. Together, Pat and Allen were the authors of seven books on book collecting and rare book values, most famously, perhaps, four impeccably researched editions of Collected Books: The Guide to Values, the successor to Van Allen Bradley's groundbreaking series of the 1970s and '80s, Book Collector's Handbook of Values. The photo of the couple reproduced herewith graced the dust jacket of the 1991 edition, their debut effort, and in the years before the Internet arrived so explosively on the scene, was pretty much the only game in town for determining issue points and comparable values.

On a more personal level, some of my earliest and fondest memories of the rare book world have involved the continuing good cheer and companionship of Pat and Allen Ahearn. My first ABAA fair as a published author, in Washington, D.C., in October 1995, had as an unqualified highlight a sumptuous crab feast at Quill & Brush, and the beginnings of a long and lasting friendship with these two very classy and decent people. For me, a book fair in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or Boston didn't start until I went over to the Quill & Brush booth and got my big hug from Pat, and it wasn't over until we all got together somewhere for spirits and dinner in a group that always included Allan and Kim Stypeck, the owners of Second Story Books, and lifelong friends of the Ahearns. These were special moments for me, and I treasure them.

Connie and I extend our deepest condolences to Allen and their four children, thirteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at St. Mary's Church in Barnesville, Maryland. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that a donation be made to a local non-profit hospice of choice, or the Alzheimer's Association.

Photograph 1991 by Robert Kalk.

A Golden Age of Papermaking?

2013-09-25T13:55:14Z

A couple of days ago, I received a number of questions from Gregory McNamee, a freelance writer who does book-related features for Britannica Online, for a piece he is doing about my forthcoming book from Knopf, On Paper. One of his queries--and he assures me he doesn't mind my using it in this context for the FB&C blog--went like this:

Has there ever been a "golden age" of papermaking, as there has been for so many other artistic endeavors? Perhaps put another way, does your heart warm in particular to any of the historic periods you write of in On Paper?

Truth be known, I don't think the question has ever been seriously raised before, at least not to my knowledge. From an artistic standpoint--if we're talking about craft and excellence of achievement, not necessarily volume--my initial response would be that a "golden age" of papermaking, if any such creature exists, would likely embrace that period before machines began to replace hand papermaking in the nineteenth century as the principal means of production, and before the introduction of chemically treated fiber from trees.

But old-salt journalist that I am, I decided to ask a couple of people whose judgment I respect in these matters--MacArthur Fellow Timothy D. Barrett, director of the Center for the Book at the University of Iowa and renowned authority on hand papermaking, and Sidney E. Berger, director of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, who with his wife, Michèle Cloonan, has assembled one of the finest collections of decorated papers in private hands--if they had any thoughts on the subject, and if they could do it in 150 words or less.

Here's what Tim had to say:

"I would venture to guess that all cultures/countries/regions have had periods when really excellent paper was made and what came afterwards was not as uniformly good. But tastes change and it depends on who you are talking to. It's kind of like asking, 'Was there ever a golden age of winemaking?' You can imagine the arguments that would ensue. Many book conservators would point to incunabula-era papermaking because much of the paper made then is still in excellent condition. More to that story of course. For me it was a golden era, but excellent paper was made afterwards, and still is."

And Sid:

"The Germans, French, and Italians in the 19th and early twentieth century created an unbelievable array of magnificent decorated papers--thousands upon thousands of them--using machinery and wood-pulp stock. Their papers were of every imaginable (and many unimaginable) designs, textures, colors, patterns, sheens, materials, and weights. These papers were used for millions of books and pamphlets, and the extent to which their decorative aesthetics went have never been equalled since the end of the First World War. Only the Japanese rival them for numbers of decorated papers and techniques. In fact, they are neck and neck in producing vast numbers of beautiful papers using every decorative technique known."

If any of you have your own thoughts, feel free to offer them on my author page on Facebook.

'Double Fold' at 10

2011-04-04T14:16:45Z

Has it really been ten years since Nicholson Baker shook up the cozy world inhabited by librarians and conservators with publication of Double Fold, his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning examination of the way materials on paper--most notably newspapers--were being displaced by surrogate copies in other, more easily stored media? Not only has it been a decade since Baker made the word "microfilm" a synonym for "leprosy"--and not undeserved, I should add--it has been an eventful decade in the book world to boot, as our own Rebecca Rego Barry reminds us in a splendid overview of Double Fold and its continuing impact. It is featured in the current issue of The Millions, the superb--dare we say indispensable?--online magazine offering comprehensive coverage of books and the arts. Here's a link. Nice going, Rebecca, very well done.

Memories on the Block

2011-02-15T21:31:17Z

Call it bittersweet, if you like, but the sale next week of the entire contents of the City of Boston's Graphic Arts Printing Plant at 174 North St., is yet another passing of the torch, and proof positive that the times surely-are-a-changing. Some 175 lots will be hammered down, according to Stanley J. Paine, the auctioneer retained by the city to clear out every vestige of a printing operation that closed last year after 78 years of service, and everything, in his words, is not only old, but downright antediluvian. "We're selling the room," he told the Boston Globe. "It's all antique. All of it. Everything has its own particulars and story."

Anyone want a Vandercook Letter Press? Or a Linotype Model 31 Typesetting Machine (there are two of them)? A Heidelberg Sheet-Fed Printing Press? A Miehle Vertical Letter Press? Saddle stitchers, folders, paper cutters, collators? Drawer after drawer filled with wonderful metal type? A Super Portland Paper Punching machine? Some splendid oak filing cabinets from the 1930s and '40s? The sale will start at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24, on-site, and for those who can't make it, bids can be submitted online via Bidspotter, where a complete list and description of the lots--with photos--is listed. (Bids, in fact, are already being accepted.) I am particularly charmed, I must say, by Lot 154, pictured here at right, identified only as Antique Letter Press S/N 28546. I don't have room in my cellar--and I don't imagine my wife would be much too pleased in any case--but I sure am tempted.

Reynolds Price, Author, "Fellow Bibliomaniac"

2011-01-21T22:45:00Z

Reynolds Price, a true southern gentleman and one of the outstanding American writers of his generation, died yesterday at 77, in Durham, North Carolina, of heart failure. While known best for his thirteen novels, Price was a magnificent stylist adept in many genres, with volumes of poetry, essays, plays, short stories, memoirs, and translations from the Bible among his other credits. His first book, A Long and Happy Life, was greeted on its release in 1962 with immediate acclaim and honors, including a coveted William Faulkner Award that set the stage for the many literary triumphs that followed, A Generous Man (1966), Kate Vaiden (1986) and The Three Gospels (1996) notable among them. His third memoir, An American Writer, Coming of Age in Oxford (2009), recalled the three years he spent as a Rhodes Scholar in the late 1950s; upon his return to the United States, he taught at Duke University, his alma mater, for more than fifty years, a favorite course among students the one on his lifelong hero, John Milton. A splendid obituary of Price's life--with some lovely comments from such admirers as Allan Gurganus and Ann Tyler--appears in today's New York Times.

Let it also be said that in addition to his remarkable body of work--thirty-eight published books, by my count--Reynolds Price was a dedicated bibliophile who had a genuine appreciation for books as artifacts. I spoke with him several times back in the 1990s for my newspaper columns, the most memorable get-together coming on May 15, 1992, when we met for lunch at a small cafe just off Harvard Square to talk about his novel Blue Calhoun, which had just been released. As much as I treasure the inscription he wrote in my copy of the book, pictured here--how could I not love being referred to by Reynolds Price as a "fellow bibliomaniac"?--the unqualified highlight of the interview came when we were discussing his courageous battle with spinal cancer, and his will to continue writing despite being confined to a wheelchair as a paraplegic. It was during this exchange that Price told me about a special book he owned, and why it meant so much to him. A phrase he used--"touching the hand"--inspired me sufficiently to use it three years later as the title for the opening chapter in A Gentle Madness.

"Milton wrote his best books after he lost his sight," he had told me back then. "I have written eleven books since I had cancer, and it represents some of the very best work I have ever done. My copy of Paradise Lost once belonged to Deborah Milton Clarke, the daughter who took Milton's dictation after he went blind. For me, it was like the apostolic succession. I was touching the hand that touched the hand that touched the Hand."

When I contacted Price two years later to go over the quote once again--he was delighted to learn that I was going to use it in my book--he reminded me to make sure that the 'h' in the final usage of the word 'hand' be capitalized. "This is the Hand of God we are talking about here, Nicholas," he said in his wonderful drawl. I get chills to this day thinking about it.

Bowdlerizing Mark Twain

2011-01-08T14:49:02Z

If Michiko Kakutani's column in today's New York Times is not the best read and most emailed piece in the paper, then not enough people are paying attention. Her take on the announcement that a new edition of Huckleberry Finn is being released with more than 200 uses of the 'n' word from the original text--yes, it is "nigger," and I will use it here just this once--being summarily changed to "slave" is exquisitely reasoned and beautifully supported with historical parallels. (There is the absurdity, for instance, of a British theater group changing the title of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 2002 to The Bellringer of Notre Dame for a new production of the play.)

The editor of the new Huckleberry Finn edition, Alan Gribben, is a professor of English at Auburn University in Alabama. His explanation for changing the word in each usage--and thus bowdlerizing what we can all agree is one of the most consequential works of fiction in the American literary canon--is to make the book more appealing to high school and college teachers who might otherwise excise it from their curricula. It is, he argues, "a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol," and thus, with one simple stroke of a search-and-replace key, voila, Mark Twain is rendered suitable for modern eyes to read without fear of being unduly bruised by the sunlight.

Instead of explaining to students that the reprehensible word has a history that goes back four hundred years, and that the slur as used in the novel was totally in character for the time and the place and the people being profiled, teachers using this sanitized text are now free to ignore unpleasantness altogether. Let's hope they will be few and far between. If leery instructors need a little help along these lines--it is called teaching, after all--they should take a look at The 'N' Word, (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) by Washington Post cultural columnist Jabari Asim. We don't accomplish a whole lot by denying the past. And we certainly don't introduce literature to young readers by grooming it to suit our delicate sensibilities.

Kudos to Ms. Kakutani for making the point so eloquently. Meanwhile, Mr. Gribben's defense of the action (which also changes "injun" to "Indian")--and that of his publisher, NewSouth Books--can be read at this link.

Some Nick's Picks to Start the Year

2011-01-02T16:50:02Z

I have decided to start the new year off with a few books that came to my attention a bit too late to make my holiday roundups, but which are eminently worthy of notice all the same. Think of each one as a little present for yourself; you won't be disappointed.

The Horse: From Cave Paintings to Modern Art, by Jean-Louis Gourand, Michel Woronoff, Henri-Paul Franefort, and others; Abbeville Press, 400 pages, with 328 full-color illustrations, boxed, $150.

So you didn't get a pony for Christmas, too bad, but you can still treat yourself to what is easily the most magnificent art book devoted to the horse that I have ever seen, and the best part is you don't have to feed it or clean out its stall. Arguably the most beautiful animal in nature, the horse has inspired creative expression for many centuries, with magnificent examples in a multitude of media to be found in the prehistoric caves of Lascaux, the sands of Mesopotamia, and depicted over the generations by cultures as varied as Babylonian, Scythian, Chinese, Greek, and Roman. First published in France in 2008, this remarkable book, newly translated and issued in a lovely boxed edition, pays homage to the horse in all its glory, with more than 300 color illustrations and thirteen learned essays to make the case. The horse, John Louis Gourand writes, is "undoubtedly the most frequently represented living being in art after man himself, from the very earliest of times." Abbeville Press lives up to its well-earned reputation for producing art books in the grand tradition; the illustrations are superbly chosen, and vividly reproduced.

George Washington's America: A Biography Through Maps, by Barnet Schecter; Walker, 304 pages, $67.50.

Known most famously, of course, as hero of the Revolution and first President of the United States, George Washington also worked as a surveyor early in his life, and had a lifelong relationship with maps. At his death, many of the charts he had owned and used were bound into an atlas that eventually made its way to the Map Collection of Sterling Library at Yale University, a corpus that provides the framework for this most interesting examination. In addition to the maps he purchased, Washington drew a number of his own that have survived. "These visual images," historian Robert Schecter writes, "place us at the scene of his youthful ambition and his later battles--in the landscapes and on the waterways that were the theater of war in Britain's North American colonies, and that sparked the imagination and desires of the preeminent founder of the United States." Once independence was secured, the maps helped shape Washington's "vision of America as 'a rising empire in the New World.'"

The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson; Yale University Press, 1,561 pages, $65.

First published in 1995, this wonderful, one-volume encyclopedia about the city that never sleeps was one of the most successful books in the long history of the Yale University Press, prompting the preparation of this completely updated effort. The World Trade Center no longer anchors the Manhattan skyline, to cite just one major change, and Bernie Madoff was not a household name back then. The E-Z pass hadn't been invented yet either, and the New York Giants hadn't shocked the New England Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl. These are just a few of the 800 entries to be added to the mix, bringing the total to 5,000. Each is written by an acknowledged authority, be it in sports, entertainment, finance, architecture, or art, and each is a delightful little essay in its own right about every manner of New York person, place, institution, and curiosity, spanning pre-history to the present, and covering all five boroughs.This is one of my very favorite reference books, all spiffed up, and relevant as ever.

Nick's Picks: Stocking Stuffers

2010-12-05T16:45:00Z

My Reading Life, by Pat Conroy; Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 333 pages, $25.

One of America's truly great storytellers, the incomparable Pat Conroy, is also a determined bibliophile--indeed one of the first signings of this delightful paean to reading was held last week at the Captain's Bookshelf in Asheville, NC--so it is no big surprise that he has written a number of essays over the years about his particular passion for books and authors. The fifteen pieces gathered here form a whole of Conroy's reading life thus far, and are a joy to pick up at any point. "Books are living things, and their task lies in their vows of silence," he writes in one chapter that will be of particular interest to collectors, his association with the Old New York Book Shop in Atlanta. (He admits to having bought up to five thousand books there.) "I could build a castle from the words I steal from books I cherish," he writes in a tribute to the librarians of his early childhood. Everything this man of the South writes, he writes from the heart. The bookish drawings by Wendell Minor that garnish these lovely ruminations are a pleasant plus to one of the outstanding books about books of the season.

Jazz; photographs by Herman Leonard; Bloomsbury, 303 pages, $65.

The black and white jazz photographs of Herman Leonard, shot during the 1940s and '50s have become the stuff of legend. Louis Armstrong, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Kenny Clark, Stan Getz, Modern Jazz Quartet--they're all here in this definitive collection, a veritable feast of musical images. "He was a master of jazz," music historian K. Heather Pinson wrote earlier this year on the occasion of Leonard's death at the age of 87, "except his instrument was a camera."

First Family: Abigail and John Adams, by Joseph J. Ellis; Alfred A. Knopf, 299 pages, $27.95.

Give Joseph Ellis all the credit in the world for committing his considerable skills to a fresh evaluation of the correspondence exchanged between John and Abigail Adams over the course of their marriage during what we can all agree were eventful times, and for demonstrating how the 1,200 surviving letters of theirs constitute "a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history." David McCullough made full use of these same letters in his magisterial biography of John Adams a decade ago, though the canvas there was monumental. Here, it is focused strictly on the remarkable relationship as revealed through the letters. The writing, of course, is superb, as always, and a joy to engage.

Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution, by Charles Rappleye; Simon & Schuster, 625 pages, $30.

Collectors of Americana know Robert Morris as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and covet examples of his autograph accordingly, but chances are that few know much about the Philadelphia entrepreneur's role in the founding of the Republic. According to historian Charles Rappleye, Morris was unsurpassed in his efforts to fund the rebellion; after the war, he served in the Continental Congress and United States Senate, and was the first Superintendent of Finance, or treasury secretary. His methods were not always above reproach, however, and a dramatic downfall led to a resounding fall from grace. All in all a ripe prospect for a modern biography, which Morris gets in this thorough examination of his life.

Madison and Jefferson, by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg; Random House, 809 pages, $35.

Dual biographies can be problematic undertakings, but Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, both respected historians and the authors separately of other books on early America, have combined here to produce a most readable account of a fifty-year friendship, perhaps one of the most consequential acquaintances in American history. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were Virginians who each served as President of the United States, we all know that, but their relationship, as profiled here, was as much symbiosis as it was mentor-protégé. Burstein and Isenberg had made a significant contribution to the literature of our Founding Fathers.

Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith, by D. K. R. Crosswell; University Press of Kentucky, 1,008 pages, $39.95.

You could almost regard this huge biography as a bookend to the Morris volume cited above in that it looks at a significant player in American history who pretty much excelled away from the spotlight, in this case as Chief of Staff during World War II to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. As the consummate military man, Ike was legendary for delegating authority to key officers, and the aide who rode herd on all of them was Walter Bedell Smith. In 1950, Smith was Harry Truman's choice to head the CIA in 1950; three years later, his former boss, by then president, named him Undersecretary of State, in which capacity he oversaw the partitioning of Vietnam into two nations, and implemented a plan for a coup d'etat in Guatemala. This is the first biography of his life, one long overdue.

Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights, by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins; Nan Talese/Doubleday, 311 pages, $27.95.

No big surprise that Jessica Kerwin, writer for Vogue, thanks "legions of librarians" in the acknowledgments she appends to this charmingly eclectic compendium, given the wealth of arcania on subjects ranging from the balloon adventures of the Montgolfier Brothers in the eighteenth century, to the history of women's lingerie, to the tradition of dining outdoors known as alfresco. It is, in short, an encyclopedia of very interesting things, and the documentation is impressive. The writing is elegant, the style accessible; altogether a fun book.

William E. Self, Producer, Bookman

2010-11-23T02:00:15Z

The passing last week of the Hollywood film and television producer William E. Self was noted by prominent obituaries published in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, both of which I recommend for their appreciative reflections of this multi-talented man's many contributions to the entertainment world over the past half-century, though neither makes mention of his remarkable acumen as a book collector, or for the two sales of his beloved library last year in New York at Christie's that for a while were the talk of the antiquarian book world.

Self's television credits in various executive capacities during the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s included The Twilight Zone, Peyton Place, Daniel Boone, Batman, MASH, some forty-four series alone during a fifteen-year tenure at 20th Century Fox Television, a good number of them as president of the company. Feature length productions included John Wayne's final film, The Shootist, and Sarah, Plain and Tall, starring Glenn Close, for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.]]> Tamerlane for the heady price of $165,000, his, finally, after trying unsuccessfully on two previous occasions to acquire what many regard as the "black tulip"of American literature. Impressed by the decisive manner in which this private collector had just swept aside the determined efforts of professional booksellers to secure a coveted prize, I went up to him immediately after the sale, introduced myself, told him what I was doing, and asked if I could interview him for a book I was working on, and had already titled A Gentle Madness.

He couldn't have been nicer or more accommodating, particularly since I was coming at him, basically, from out of the woodwork, and all I had at the time as a portfolio to recommend me for what I was doing was my enthusiasm for the project. A few months later, my wife Connie and I visited Bill at his home in Bel Air, California, and received a splendid tour of his library, both pictured above on the occasion of our visit. He had even made a special visit to the bank vault where a number of his highest of high spots were kept, most notably the Tamerlane--which I photographed, at right, in his hand--and his copy of the 1865 suppressed edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice Adventures in Wonderland, one of only 19 known to exist.

A few years after Gentle Madness was published, I was in New York at the ABAA fair to sign copies of my latest book, and Bill Self was waiting to see me at my booth before the session started. He had come by to tell me that he had decided to sell his copy of the Alice to a well known private collector who had been "hounding" him, to use his word, for a number of years to part with it. "I don't even collect Carroll," he said--and when he told me the price, I agreed it was an offer he couldn't refuse. Bill was a true realist when it it came to his collections, and subscribed to the view best articulated by the legendary Robert Hoe that holds if today's collectors don't nourish the market with their treasures when it is time to let them go, then there won't be anything of consequence left for the next generation to acquire, since everything will be in institutions.

So it came as no surprise at all to me when I learned in 2008 that everything Bill had gathered so lovingly over so many decades would be going on the block at Christie's. Prices realized were robust. The collection of Charles Dickens material in particular, bequeathed to Self by a man named Kenyon Starling--a friendship in collecting which I discuss at length in Gentle Madness--was sold separately, and included some remarkable association copies. The Tamerlane--which occasioned my getting to know Bill in 1990--went for $665,000.

Bill Self, Hollywood producer and bookman extraordinaire, was 89 years old. A funeral service was held today in Forrest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Nick's Picks: Five Winners

2010-11-09T23:55:16Z

Looking for some stocking stuffers? Here are five beauties I particularly recommend, with more to follow in the weeks to come.

Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd; Nan Talese/Doubleday, 403 pages, $37.50. Writing about the life of a city as if it were a living, breathing organism is a specialty of the estimable English writer Peter Ackroyd, his "London: The Biography" of a few years back being an exemplar of the form; with "Venice: Pure City," he offers a worthy companion. As a place seemingly set apart from the rest of Italy--Venice is a cluster of islands in a lagoon, really--the city's insularity has given it a degree of independence. "The Italians do not really think of Venice at all," Ackroyd writes, "it belongs to some other realm of fancy or of artifice." His blend of detail and atmosphere is always in perfect balance, his narrative skill apparent in every chapter.

]]> Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans; Random House, 643 pages, $35. Ballet is a unique form of performance, Jennifer Homans notes in this cultural history of the art form, in that it has no written texts or standardized system of notation. With traditions that go back more than four centuries, it is in essence a storyteller's art passed on from teacher to student, with styles that are distinctive to various national traditions. A distinguished scholar-in-residence at New York University and dance critic of the New Republic—and a professionally trained dancer in her own right—Homans is ideally suited to write this pioneering, comprehensive work. She quotes Theophile Gautier on the magic of the form: "The very essence of ballet is poetic, deriving from dreams rather than from reality. About the only reason for its existence is to enable us to remain in the world of fantasy and escape from the people we rub shoulders with in the street."

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester; Harper, 495 pages, $27.99. I don't know how it is that Simon Winchester manages to write relevant book after relevant book, each one a particular take on a fascinating subject, each marvelously researched and engaging written, but here's the latest, a fresh examination of a massive body of water to be sure, but as the subtitle suggests without a trace of exaggeration, a “vast ocean of a million stories.” He tells a good number of them in “Atlantic,” with grace, originality, and consummate style. As always, a terrific read.

The Noel Coward Reader, edited with commentary by Barry Day; Alfred A. Knopf, 596 pages, $39.95. If any writer of consequence deserves a comprehensive “reader” of his or her works, it is the extraordinarily versatile English man-of-letters Noel Coward (1899-1973), playwright, lyricist, versifier, essayist, short story writer, scriptwriter and author of wonderfully witty and ever quotable letters. Barry Day, a British author who has built a career out of editing the Coward corpus, has pulled together a marvelous selection, organized it by decade, and included delightful examples in every section. All in all a copious portion of tasty goodies, and beautifully produced to boot.

Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages That Made the Countryside, by Clive Aslet; Bloomsbury, 657 pages, $65. This inviting series of vignettes illuminates the history and culture of five hundred villages, each contributing in many palpable ways to the continuing saga that is England. “The story of the village is that of the countryside itself,” Clive Aslet writes. “Each puts a single aspect of rural Britain under the spotlight: a country poet, a way of building, an agricultural innovation, a horrible death, a rare survival, a monument to an exceptional person or event.” It's a fascinating way to look at the development of a national identity, and for the reader, easy to pick up and dip into at any point, with an agreeable pace that sustains itself throughout.

Little Rock Centennial

2010-10-19T15:16:18Z

The Little Rock Public Library—known since 1975 as the Central Library of Arkansas System, or CALS—is observing it's hundredth birthday this year, an ongoing celebration that I was pleased to participate in last week with a talk at the main library, a bustling operation that last year accommodated close to 2 million customers, some 37,400 visitors a week, and on track now to exceed that number for 2010. The figures for book circulation, 2.3 million volumes, 44,300 a week, are also up 11 percent from 2008, yet another indicator of just how essential the public library remains as a cultural institution in our daily lives.

What really knocked me off my feet on this trip, though, was the fantastic second-hand bookstore owned by CALS in downtown Little Rock, the first such public library initiative of its kind to my experience, and operated since 2001 in support of the library. Called River Market Books & Gifts, the store occupies three floors in the Cox Building, a beautifully restored machinery warehouse that dates to 1906, and includes a chic cafe, art gallery and creative center for various library programs. The variety of used books is spectacular, I must say, and because all are donated, they are offered for sale at exceedingly fair prices (and in remarkably decent condition as well.)

]]> The operation, called River Market Books, has books on three floors, all of them donated as part of an ongoing program coordinated by an active Friends of the Library group that also mounts three major book sales a year. In 2009, 140,462 books, hardcover and paperback combined, were sold, raising $76,092; for the two sales already held this year, the numbers are $56,701 and 101,589 books sold. All of the books, once again, are donated, and all of the work for the sales is done by volunteers. Pretty amazing stuff.

My thanks to Bobby Roberts, the library director, and Susan Hill Gele, director of public relations, for making my visit to Little Rock so thoroughly enjoyable, and indeed, so productive. (I found four books in the Cox Building, including a John H. Jenkins catalog from 1979, "Five Centuries of Printing, 1450-1978," featuring at least one title from each of the first 500 years of print, a particularly welcome item to my shelves, and mine for the grand price of $6.)

Also on the docket was a visit to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, and a good tour of the collections there provided by Rob Seibert, the archivist. One of Seibert's collateral duties is supervision of the referennce library, which now includes 660 books written about former president Bill Clilnton and his administration, quite a bookshelf of historical inquiry and commentary, and growing all the time.

NYPL Selects New President

2010-10-06T13:57:50Z

Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has confirmed to Bloomberg News that he will become the new president of the New York Public Library next year, succeeding Paul LeClerc, who has been at the helm since 1993. LeClerc announced his retirement last November, prompting a nationwide search to find a replacement.

The appointment of Marx follows a long-standing precedent at the NYPL of turning to academe for its top leadership. LeClerc, a noted scholar of 18th-century French literature--and an enthusiastic collector of Voltaire in his own right--came to the job from the presidency of Hunter College, the largest institution of public learning in New York City. He succeeded the Reverend Timothy S. Healy, a native New Yorker who had previously been president of Georgetown University in Washington; Healy, in turn, had succeeded the historian Vartan Gregorian, former provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and later the president of Brown University.

Given the increasing reliance on electronic resources, along with the evolving role of libraries as institutions in American cultural life, the selection of Marx to this premier position is particularly interesting, especially for the NYPL, which has assumed such an important role in public education in New York, not only through its 87 neighborhood branches, but at the extraordinary research centers it maintains in Manhattan. In an email to Bloomberg News confirming his appointment--which must still be approved by the library's board--Marx wrote that the NYPL is "New York City's preeminent education institution that is free and open to all."

Also a New York native, Marx, 51, initiated a no-loan financial aid policy at Amherst that allows graduates to pursue careers without worrying about debt. Before assuming the presidency of the college eight years ago, he was a professor of political science at Columbia University, where he helped found Khanya College, a prep school in South Africa, and started the Columbia Urban Educators Program, which recruits and trains teachers.

The New York Public Library budget exceeds $500 million a year, and last year had more than 18 million visitors. We wish Marx success in his new position, and LeClerc well in his retirement.

A Pair of Keepers

2010-09-13T14:02:14Z

I am delighted to report the publication of two books that I have been eager for some time to see appear between hard covers, having had the opportunity to know a bit about them beforehand, and to have had communication with each of the authors as they were works-in-progress. Happily, they are everything I expected they would be, gracefully written in both instances, wisely reasoned, and a genuine pleasure to read.

Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers; Harper, 267 pages, $24.99.

A former staff writer and media critic for the Washington Post, William Powers
has written extensively on every manner of communications technology, developing the premise of this book--and coming up with the splendid title--while a Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press in 2006. Powers is exceedingly savvy when it comes to navigating his way about the digital world, and while he is not about to abandon its wondrous applications in any way, shape, or form, he has chosen to step back a bit, take a deep breath, and pay attention to the wisdom of our cultural forebears. "The interior struggle" of "information overload," he writes--the phrase was presciently coined in the 1970s by Alvin Toffler--"is having a dramatic impact in our personal and family relationships." Constant connectivity with the entire world--text messages, cellphones, video streams--leads him to ask the fundamental question: "What is the point anyway?" This is neither a preachy polemic nor a boring diatribe, and while he calls on Plato, Shakespeare, Thoreau, and others for guidance, he does so with style, humility and elan. "Every space is what you make it," he concludes. "But in the end, building a good life isn't about where you are. It's about how you decide to think and live. Place your index finger on your temple and tap twice. It's all in there." Links to various reviews and broadcast interviews are available on Powers' website.

The Groaning Shelf and Other Instances of Book Love, by Pradeep Sebastian; Hachette India, 295 pages, 12.99 GBP ($20 US).

A well-known literary columnist in India whose many pieces for major publications are available on the Internet, Pradeep Sebastian has entered the books about books genre in impressive fashion, with a very nice collection of his erudite pieces on a striking variety of subjects, many of them previously published in different form, though a few--including a generous profile of yours truly he calls "The Collector of Collectors"--appearing here for the first time. How can a reader of the Fine Books blog not be simpatico with someone who makes this admission: "Holding a book but not actually reading it gave me time (and put me in the mood) to reflect on the act of reading and the physicality of the book; the book as material object." Or someone whose favorite Sunday afternoon ritual is take volumes off his groaning shelves and rearrange them in a new order? "Should I abandon the by-author arrangement and categorize them by subject matter?" Very heavy concerns, indeed. The book has just been released by the India division of Hachette, parent company of Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt. It should be available in U.S. outlets shortly; for now it can be ordered through Amazon.UK.

In Tribute to Peter Howard

2010-08-22T18:47:32Z

For the last couple of weeks, the booktryst blog has been running a series of moving tributes to a legendary California bookseller under the collective heading, "A Wake for the Still Alive: Peter B. Howard." People who either don't know Peter or who have never been to Serendipity Books might reasonably regard this as audacious at best, but since everything about Peter is completely honest and candid, it is very much in character. For a case in point, just take a look at his no-nonsense website. "If you're in Berkeley, California, feel free to come in and browse," he writes. "We are usually friendly."]]> one of which used the occasion to speculate on the future of his extraordinary bookstore. Always open and always willing to share his considered impressions on just about anything--I have never met a more forthcoming or more unassuming person in my life, and that is something to say for a person who has spent more than forty years as a professional journalist--Peter readily acknowledged the nature of his illness with the reporter, and offered the additional assessment that he was custodian of the "greatest bookstore in the world," and used a descriptive adjective for emphasis to make his point--as only he can do.

Booksellers contributing essays about Peter thus far include Michael Thompson of Los Angeles, Ed Glaser of Napa Valley, Calif., John Crichton of San Francisco, Ralph Sipper of Santa Barbara, Calif., Vic Zoschak of Alameda, Calif, Jeff Towns of the UK, Martin Stone of Paris, James Pepper of Santa Barbara, Calif., Charles Seluzicki of Portland, Ore., Ken Sanders of Salt Lake City, Mary Cooper Gilliam of Charlottesville, Va,, Eric Korn of London, and David Mason of Toronto. As I said above, pretty amazing stuff. Print copies of the tribute are being sold at $20 per copy, with all proceeds to benefit the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABAA) Benevolent Fund, a project that Peter has championed for years.

For myself, I am eternally grateful to Peter for being there twenty years ago when we met for the first time to talk about a range of matters. I had no earthly idea before we met how knowledgeable he would be about everyone and everything in the book world, or the depth, for that matter, of his piercing intellect. Especially memorable was his willingness to respond, on the record, to every reasonable question I put to him, regardless of the potential fallout. I can't imagine writing A Gentle Madness without the benefit of his many insights, and when it came time to include a section on scholarly booksellers in Patience & Fortitude, he was the first person I chose to profile. All I can say, Peter, is thank you for sharing your wisdom with me, thank you for your friendship, and thank you for being such a remarkable bookman. You are truly one of a kind.