Library of Congress's Blog, page 13

Freud’s Notebook: “To Remember is to Relive”

—This is a guest post by Meg McAleer, a former historian in the Manuscript Division.

Sigmund Freud returned again and again to the problem of memory as he formulated his theories of psychoanalysis during the 1890s, as the Library’s significant collection of his papers show.

“What is essentially new about my theory,” Freud wrote in this letter to fellow physician and confidante Wilhelm Fliess, “is the thesis that memory is present not once but several times over, that it is laid down in various kinds of indications.” The second page of this letter sketches the progression of memory from perception (“W”) to the unconscious (“Ub (II)”) and eventually to consciousness (“Bew”).

Freud refined his theories over time in significant ways but remained committed to the notion that the past exerts a powerful influence over the present as memories embedded in the unconscious break through into consciousness through selective, altered and fluid remembering and forgetting.

Slipped into a pocket and kept close to the body, pocket notebooks are intimate, hidden and always accessible.

Freud purchased this small leather-bound notebook while vacationing in Florence in the waning summer of 1907. Its cover bears the Italian words “Ricordare è rivivere” (“to remember is to relive”). Freud owned many similar notebooks, filling them sequentially through the decades with jottings of names, addresses, expenses, ideas and observations.

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Treasures Gallery: The First Italian Cookbook

—This is a guest post by Lucia Wolf, a reference specialist in the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division.

In the late 1400s, Maestro Martino, a chef from Como, in Lombardy, created the first Italian cookbook, “Libro de arte coquinaria,” or “The Art of Cooking.” The full, translated title reveals more of Martino’s background and qualifications: “Book of the art of cooking composed by the extraordinary Maestro Martino, former cook of the Most Reverend Monsignor Chamberlain and Patriarch of Aquileia.”

Martino’s recipes presented clearly written instructions on how to manipulate basic ingredients and transform them into actual dishes. Previously, recipes were transmitted orally or simply jotted down as lists of ingredients without explanations on how to use them.

Centuries later, another cook in Lombardy began recording recipes in a modest booklet, likely in service of a noblewoman. The unidentified 19th-century cook included recipes she wished to document for “Domenica,” who may have been her assistant.

Following the initial pages, the book delivers familiar local recipes handwritten and typed by various individuals and passed on from one generation of cooks to another, dating from around 1910 to 1930. The book’s only hint to its authorship is an inscription on the blue marbled cover: “Zia Annita,” or Aunt Annita.

This plain recipe book carries the secrets of a native Italian cuisine that may eventually have vanished from memory had they not been recorded and transmitted by generations of local cooks.

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2024 National Book Festival Lineup

The 2024 Library of Congress National Book Festival returns to the Washington Convention Center on Saturday, Aug. 24. The festival’s theme this year, “Books Build Us Up,” explores how reading can help connect us and inform our lives. It’s through books that readers can develop strong bonds with writers and their ideas – relationships that open the entire world, real or imagined, to us all.

Throughout the day, attendees will hear conversations from authors of various genres across the festival’s many stages. Award-winning author James Patterson will chat about his newest novel “The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: Their Stories Are Better Than the Bestsellers,” and James McBride will discuss his new work “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.”

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will take readers on an emotional journey in her latest book, “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,” a story dedicated to the last years of her husband’s life after serving as an aide and speechwriter to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Erik Larson, author of “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War,” will bring to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War.

Sandra Cisneros celebrates the 40th Anniversary of “The House on Mango Street,” Abby Jimenez, author of “Just for the Summer,” and Casey McQuiston, author of “The Pairing,” join forces to chat about their romance novels. Rebecca Yarros talks about her bestselling “Empyrean” fantasy series including “Iron Flame,” sequel to her bestselling “Fourth Wing.”

On some timely topics, Annalee Newitz, author of “Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind,” and Peter Pomerantsev, author of “How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler,” discuss the impact, now and historically, of political propaganda and misinformation. Also, Joy Buolamwini, author of “Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines,” and Kyle Chayka, author of “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture,” dive deep into the impact of technology.

Explore how cooking can inspire with Tamron Hall and Lish Steiling’s “A Confident Cook: Recipes for Joyous, No-Pressure Fun in the Kitchen.”

Grammy Award-winning vocalist Renée Fleming explores the healing power of music in her latest book, “Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness,” on stage with renowned psychologist and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, author of “I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine.”

Young adult readers will enjoy a conversation with Candace Fleming, author of “The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets and Helped Win World War II,” and Monica Hesse, author of “The Brightwood Code.”

For children, featured authors will include actor and author Max Greenfield debuting his new children’s book, “Good Night Thoughts.” National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Meg Medina will share her latest children’s book, “No More Señora Mimí,” a salute to the caregivers who enter a child’s tender world.

The National Book Festival will take place on Saturday, Aug. 24 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Doors will open at 8:30 a.m. The festival is free and open to everyone.

Interested attendees not able to join the festival in person can tune into conversations throughout the day. Events on the Main Stage will be livestreamed on loc.gov/bookfest. Videos of all presentations will be made available at loc.gov and on the Library’s YouTube channel  shortly after the festival.

Visit loc.gov/bookfest to learn more about attending the festival. A comprehensive schedule will be available on the website and announced on the Library’s Bookmarked blog in the coming weeks. Subscribe to the blog for updates on festival plans and more. The National Book Festival celebrates creators and invites the public to be curious about the Library and its collections in their own creative or scholarly pursuits.

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Look Up! It’s Blashfield’s Mural

The artwork of the magnificent Jefferson Building reaches its pinnacle, literally, with a painted homage to learning and progress set high up in the dome.

Each day, visitors and researchers who enter the Main Reading Room crane their necks as far back as they can to take in “Human Understanding,” a mural created by American artist Edwin Howland Blashfield at the apex of the soaring, coffered dome.

In Blashfield’s work, a beautiful female figure, set against a soft blue background, lifts away a veil of ignorance. On her right, a cherub holds a book of wisdom. To her left, another cherub seems to beckon viewers far below to join in a quest for knowledge.

In the collar just below, 12 painted figures represent countries or epochs that, when the mural was completed in 1896, were thought to have contributed the most to Western civilization.

Rome, for example, represents administration, Islam physics, Greece philosophy and Italy the fine arts. The English figure, representing literature, holds a copy of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The character symbolizing Judea and religion sits beside a pillar inscribed with the biblical admonition to love thy neighbor as thyself.

One character might look familiar: The figure embodying America (and science) was modeled on a young Abraham Lincoln, here sitting in a machine shop, pondering a problem of mechanics.

A character modeled on Abraham Lincoln represents America and science. Photo: Shawn Miller

“Human Understanding” is full of coded meaning, leaving its significance not always apparent to the upturned faces some 125 feet below. But there is, of course, another aspect to the scene that’s impossible to miss: the awe-inspiring beauty of Blashfield’s work and its glorious setting.

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Treasures Gallery: Surviving Hiroshima

This is a guest post by Meg McAleer, a former historian in the Manuscript Division. It also appears in a slightly shorter version in the May-June issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, which is devoted to the June opening the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

Haruo Shimizu, a Japanese schoolteacher, survived the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. One year later, he wrote down his memories of that horrific day on 24 pages of lined rice paper in his careful penmanship.

Shimizu remembered boarding a trolley that morning to visit a friend before reporting to work at a munitions factory. At approximately 8:15 a.m., his world exploded with “a silver-white flash, like that of magnesium powder used in taking a photograph, high up in the sky.” The U.S. bomber Enola Gay had dropped an atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy.”

Torrential rain began to fall. Shimizu grew disoriented: “A tremendous clap of thunder went on and huge columns of brown clouds with dust and flame were making sheer screens all around.” The dead and dying surrounded him. “Some of them were carrying their wounded wives on their shoulders and some their dead children in their arms. They were all desperately shouting for help and calling aloud the names of their families.” The next day, he saw a B-29 plane circling the city. His anger erupted: “What the hell do you think there is still left to be bombed in this devastated city?”

Aerial photo of Hiroshima taken several months after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Photo: U.S. Army. Prints and Photographs Division.

Shimizu returned to his native Hokkaido. Though afflicted by radiation poisoning and trauma, he secured a job as an interpreter in an Otaru hotel that served as an American military club during the U.S. occupation. There he met and befriended Willard C. Floyd, a 19-year-old soldier from Bliss, Idaho.

The account of Hiroshima, written by Shimizu in flawless English in 1946, was for Floyd, so that he would understand the terror, devastation and loss hidden beneath the soaring mushroom cloud. Floyd eventually moved to Arizona after returning from the war and ran a barber shop. He died in 1985. His family gave his papers, including Shimizu’s manuscript, to the Library in 2020.

Writing about and sharing traumatic memories can lead to self-healing for some people. Shimizu was a Walt Whitman scholar who taught at Japanese colleges and published on Whitman’s poetry. Like the poet, Shimizu captured the inhumanity of war in his writing, yet he retained his faith in humanity.

Shimizu retired from teaching Gifu Women’s University in 1986. He died in 1997. You can read more of his war account, and of his brief but sincere friendship with Floyd, in this blog post.

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Treasures Gallery: The AIDS Quilt

This is a guest post by Charles Hosale, an archivist in the American Folklife Center. It also appears in the May-June issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, which is devoted to the June opening the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt, regarded as the largest folk art project ever created, is like a chorus. Individual voices have been stitched together into a monumental whole, but that whole cannot exist without each part.

The quilt is composed of more than 50,000 panels, each one memorializing a life or lives lost to AIDS. Each panel is 3 feet by 6 feet, roughly the size of a human grave. Panels were combined by dedicated volunteers into 12-by-12-foot blocks that are displayed together to form the quilt.

Quilt block 1333 contains panels for eight men. One of those panels was made in 1989 by Steve Horwitz in memory of his partner, David Keisacker. Like other contributors, Horwitz sent photographs and a written memorial for Keisacker to the AIDS Quilt archive, along with the panel. The panel and these documents combine to form a moving glimpse of Horwitz’s and Keisacker’s lives — their submission joins tens of thousands of others to form a beautiful and devastating chorus. The Library’s American Folklife Center has held the quilt’s archival collections since 2019.

The AIDS Quilt displayed on the National Mall. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

Block 1333 is one of the thousands displayed at events across the world, including the displays on the National Mall. While displays continue today, the last full display of the quilt was on the Mall in 1996 — the quilt has grown too large to be displayed there all at once.

These exhibitions starkly show the scale of loss the United States and the world continue to experience. The undeniable magnitude of the quilt and the significance of each story stitched into it celebrate the memory of AIDS victims and demand justice for their suffering.

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Treasures Gallery: Spider-Man’s Origin Story

—This is a guest post by Sara Duke, a librarian in the Prints and Photographs Division. It also appears in the May-June issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, which is devoted to the June opening the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

In 2008, the Library became even more aware that “with great power there must also come great responsibility!” The Library received the 24 original drawings by Steve Ditko for Amazing Fantasy No. 15, including the Spider-Man origin story.

The intact stories permit artists, historians and fans an opportunity to study the art, the nuances between penciling and inking and the use of opaque white to alter images and text. They also benefit from the evidence of artist and writer interaction. The real super hero of this acquisition story is the anonymous donor, who kept the art together and donated this priceless treasure to the Library for generations to enjoy.

With writer Stan Lee, Ditko created this classic of the comic book’s “Silver Age” (1956-1969), an era of superheroes’ resurgence in the mainstream comic book industry, following the genre’s decline after World War II. In this August 1962 issue, Ditko’s clean, eye-catching design pulls the viewer into the scene and sets the suspenseful tone for the eleven-page story.

Two panels from the Spider-Man origin story in Amazing Fantasy. Image: Courtesy of Marvel. Prints and Photographs Division.

Some changes in the Spider-Man! art occurred after inking and remain visible on the art but are invisible in the published version. In the lower right panel on the third page (shown above), writer Stan Lee asks Ditko to alter both the appearance of a vehicle and its passengers. Lee wrote, “Steve. Make this a covered sedan — no arms hanging. Don’t imply wild reckless driving. S.” The altered roof support is not visible in the published version.

On the sixth page, Peter Parker dresses in the costume he has made, and for the first-time readers can see the intricate webbing and fussy cape-like filigree under Spider-Man’s arms. Readers learn that the bookish Peter, with his knowledge of science, has invented web shooters and experimented with their use. It is not until a major change occurs at the end of the story that Parker becomes a super hero and learns the lessons of responsibility.

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Pride Month: Transcribe Walt Whitman?

Volunteers have been working over the past five years to transcribe the Library’s manuscripts of Walt Whitman, one of the nation’s most iconic poets, from three major collections. Can you help proofread the final 4,000 pages?

This June, the Library is hoping you’ll do just that as we celebrate Pride month.

Through By the People, the Library’s online crowdsourced transcription program, you can  transcribe and review historical texts across the Library’s collections, from Clara Barton’s diaries to Leonard Bernstein’s papers. Completed transcriptions are published on our website to enhance accessibility and enable keyword search.

Whitman — the author of letters, notes, essays, memoir materials, and poetry, including “Song of Myself,” “O Captain, My Captain!” and many other poems compiled in his momentous 19th-century masterpiece “Leaves of Grass” —  is one of voices that helped define the national character.

Walt Whitman in 1869. Photo: William Kurtz. Prints and Photographs Division.

The Library holds the largest number of Whitman materials in the world. Beginning with Whitman’s bicentennial birthday celebration in 2019, more than 3,700 volunteers have transcribed some 33,500 items, mostly handwritten pages, into typed text. Thanks to their work, anyone with access to the Library’s website from anywhere in the world can use keyword searches to help their research in the Library’s digital presentations of the Whitman collections. The transcriptions also enhance online access for those who need screen readers to understand the handwritten images.

This Pride month, again in Whitman’s honor, we’re looking to wrap up the project by encouraging volunteers to proofread the last 4,000 items of transcribed material. It’s the last, crucial step before transcriptions can be published to the website.

What would you be reviewing?

The papers that need work include correspondence, family papers and materials related to the production of Whitman’s books. But the vast majority fall into the varied and fascinating category of “miscellany” from the Charles E. Feinberg Collection of Whitman’s papers. Spanning from 1834 to 1918, these include autographs, correspondence, calling cards, programs, invitations, scrapbooks, railroad and ferry tickets, labels, wrappers and financial papers.

A program of the Walt Whitman Debating Society. Manuscript Division.

These bits and pieces offer evidence about Whitman’s life and the activities of those who were close to him. There is evidence of his 1850s work in Brooklyn as a carpenter and contractor; his 1862 military passes to visit Army camps; the 1863 Christian Commission certificate for volunteering in Civil War military hospitals; his 1866 appointment for civil service work in the Attorney General’s office in Washington, D.C.; invitations to celebrations of his birthday during his Camden-Philadelphia years; annotated maps indicating travels; a copy of his will; and his sketched design for the Whitman burial vault at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.

Here’s how you can jump in: Create an account, then explore the Walt Whitman campaign on By the People. Find a page that needs review and check that all the text is captured accurately. If everything is correct, just click “Accept!” If you need to make a few changes, click “Edit,” then save and resubmit the transcription for another volunteer to review. It’s that easy!

Every page you review brings us one step closer to completing this project and meeting our Pride month goal. We also hope you will reflect on the amazing life Whitman led as you encounter his life and words firsthand and contribute to his ongoing legacy.

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It’s a Small(er) World Without the Sherman Brothers

The Oscar-winning songwriter and composer Richard Sherman, whose musical work with his brother was such an essential part of Walt Disney Studios that the company renamed their premier soundstage after them, passed away over the Memorial Day weekend. He was 95. Robert, his brother and songwriter partner, died in 2012.

The pair, prolific since their teenage years in California, wrote the music that helped define the Disney brand during the 1960s and early 1970s. They wrote much, if not all, of the music for “Mary Poppins,” “Winnie the Pooh” and “The Jungle Book,” as well as the studio’s weekly television show.

They also composed what was the most played song in music history, at least until the digital era and streaming services.

“It’s a Small World (After All)” was first composed as the theme music for a ride at Disney’s exhibit at the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. The water ride, which took passengers past rows of mechanical dolls from around the globe singing the song, became a fixture at the company’s theme parks and the song played endlessly, as every parkgoer came to know all too well.

“People either want to kill us or kiss us,” Sherman said in an interview with the Library in 2022, when the song was inducted into the National Recording Registry.

Robert and Richard Sherman (l-r) in 2002. Photo: Howard352, Wikimedia Commons.

Together, the Shermans wrote hits for pop radio, such as “You’re Sixteen” hit for both Johnny Burnette and Ringo Starr; music for films outside of Disney, such as “Chitty Chitty Bang “Tom Sawyer”; and many songs for Broadway.

The pair won two Academy Awards (both for “Mary Poppins”) and three Grammys. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and were awarded the National Medal of Arts. Songs from many of their productions — “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” “I Wan’na Be Like You,” “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” “Winnie the Pooh” — became staples for children of the era.

Sherman was in good spirits when I spoke with him by phone in April 2022 for the occasion of “Small World” being inducted into the NRR. He patiently explained how their father, Al, had fled Jewish persecution in what was then the Russian Empire (today, Ukraine), came to the U.S. and had an extremely successful songwriting career, penning hundreds of songs for Tin Pan Alley and for the film industry.

Robert and Richard were born in the 1920s and urged by their father to follow in his footsteps.

It wasn’t all Disney and show tunes, though. During World War II, Robert Sherman was one of the first U.S. troops who entered Dachau, the infamous Nazi death camp. Richard Sherman, two years younger, later served in the military but not overseas during the war.

Later, as the brothers’ fame increased, their relationship deteriorated to the point that they did not speak or socialize except for work. This was a delicate point of the 2009 documentary, “The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story.” Still, the personal sourness did not bleed over into their professional work. The stars who came out to appear in the documentary, all with affectionate anecdotes, included Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury and John Landis.

The best part of our 20-minute conversation, perhaps, was when Sherman recounted how easily the pair had written “Small.”

“We didn’t sweat blood over it,” he laughed.

Walt Disney had asked them to compose a song for the company’s exhibit at the World’s Fair, which was part of a tribute to UNICEF. The brothers worked up “Small” and, having no idea that Disney was about to embark on building more theme parks (the company had only one at the time), proposed to give the copyright of the song to UNICEF. It would be a very modest sum, they thought, since the ride would come and go with the fair.

Disney was driving them across the company lot when they proposed this. He was shocked.

Sherman, telling the story: “He stopped the car, turned and said, ‘Don’t you give that away! That’s for your grandkids! It’ll put them through college!’ ”

They kept the copyright and Disney knew his business. Out of all their major hits? “It’s our biggest copyright by far,” Sherman mused, more than half a century later.

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Treasures Gallery: What Did Lincoln Have in His Pockets the Night of His Assassination?

—This is a guest post by Mark Dimunation, former chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. It also appears in the May-June issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, which is devoted to the June opening the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

Soon after Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., he was carried across the street to a boarding house. At 7:22 the next morning, the 16th president of the United States took his last breath.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is reported to have said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” A lock of Lincoln’s hair was cut at the request of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.

Upon Lincoln’s death, his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was given the contents of the president’s pockets. It was, for the most part, a gathering of the ordinary and everyday: two pairs of eyeglasses; a chamois lens polisher; an ivory and silver pocketknife; a large white Irish linen handkerchief (slightly used) with “A. Lincoln” embroidered in red; a sleeve button with a gold initial “L”; a gold quartz watch fob without a watch; a new silk-lined leather wallet containing a pencil; a Confederate $5 bill; news clippings of unrest in the Confederate Army, emancipation in Missouri and the Union party platform of 1864; and an article on the presidency by John Bright.

Through their association with tragedy, these objects had become relics and were kept in the Lincoln family for more than 70 years. They came to the Library in 1937 as part of a gift from Lincoln’s granddaughter, Mary Lincoln Isham. They joined the Library’s holdings of Lincoln’s papers, forming the nation’s most lasting collection of one of its most revered presidents.

The items were not shown or exhibited until the 1970s. But when they are on display, they always fascinate Library guests. Most of the items in his wallet will be featured in “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” the inaugural exhibit of the Library’s new Treasures Gallery, opening June 13. The exhibit will also feature one of Lincoln’s handwritten drafts of the Gettysburg Address, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863, and an enlarged copy of the only known photo clearly showing him at the ceremony.

In this highly enlarged detail  from a much larger photograph, Lincoln is at almost the center of the photograph, hatless, looking down slightly, and probably seated. It is such a small part of the original image that Lincoln was not spotted in it until 1952. Photo: Prints and Photographs Division.

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