Library of Congress's Blog, page 40

Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age

Detail from the “Book of Hours.” published in France, circa 1420. Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

This is a guest post by Marianna Stell, a reference assistant in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. It appeared earlier this year in the Library of Congress Magazine.

Like contemporary digital interfaces, medieval manuscripts anticipate an engaged user. Imagine that you are viewing a well-designed webpage from behind the glass of a museum case. The glass would prevent you from interacting with the page as the designer intended. You would be an observer, not a user.

Viewing a medieval manuscript without information about its historical context can be a similarly limited experience. Medieval manuscripts are not static products. Like a website, a manuscript realizes its purpose in its dynamic engagement with its user. Rather than simply instructing readers, a manuscript’s compositional program is designed to move viewers to some action. The nature of the action depends upon the context for which the manuscript was created to function.

An illuminated prayer book, like the one by the Boucicault Master pictured above, is designed to catch the user’s attention. Light dances off the many flecks of gold leaf used in the borders and the miniatures, catching the eye of the reader with even the smallest motion and making the page appear as though it is illumined from within. Books of Hours like this one were created to allow laypersons to participate in the cycle of prayers that priests and monastic orders kept. The program of images and words connected domestic habits to the larger rhythms of the church festival calendar and the cycle of the seasons.

Intended to be portable, Books of Hours were sometimes fashioned as a girdle book. The length of cloth attached to the binding was tied in a knot and often tucked into a belt for easy transport. As a consequence, Books of Hours were used at home, at church and even at gravesides.

Not all medieval manuscripts were created for a ritual context, however. Some manuscripts were created to prompt mental rather than physical engagement. Manuscripts created for personal study assumed use in the active theater of the reader’s mind. A 15th-century encyclopedic manuscript in the Rosenwald Collection contains compositions that are built to generate mental associations. The design is a testament to the medieval creator’s ability to nest layers of information into a central image so that the reader might more easily remember the content.

This medieval manuscript references a metaphor that scholars ride on the shoulders of their mightier predecessors. Germany, circa 1410. Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

A 15th-century reader would recognize an image of what looks to be a piggyback ride as referring to a famous metaphor attributed to Bernard of Chartres, who claimed that modern scholars (i.e., those working around 1150 A.D.) are like dwarves being carried by giants. The modern scholar can see further into the horizon only because the ancients, like the giant, have given him a leg up. Modern knowledge therefore rests in a privileged position only because of those giants who wrote and studied beforehand. Illustrating this point, the giant’s surcoat (what we’d call an overcoat today) is inscribed with references to the seven liberal arts, which the medieval educational system inherited from the Romans.

The design of the composition moves the reader around in a circle, like the one labeled “macrocosm” above the head of the dwarf. By following the internal itinerary of the page, the reader actively experiences and internalizes its informational content. In so doing the reader becomes part of the manuscript’s larger message: Each human being is a microcosm of the greater macrocosm of the universe.

For those of us studying book arts in the digital age, we are the dwarves and the medieval manuscript designers are our giants.

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Maps: The (Bright) Side of the Moon

The 1962 map of the moon. The Sea of Tranquility, where the Apollo 11 mission landed, is the large dark area at center right, Geography and Map Division.

Cynthia Smith, a reference specialist in the Geography and Map Division, wrote a short piece about this lunar map for the Library of Congress Magazine. It’s been expanded here.

The Soviet Union demonstrated its early lead in the Cold War space race with the United States with the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957. They continued to develop their space program and, in April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth.

The orbit was a dicey proposition. Nearly half of  Soviet rocket launches had failed. A launch pad explosion in 1960 had killed dozens of  people, perhaps more than 1o0. Somehow, Gagarin was preternaturally calm on April 12, the morning of his launch. His pulse rate was just 64 a few minutes before liftoff. Then the rockets kicked in on Vostok 1, his ship, sending him just beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

His single orbit took just under two hours. It was not a good ride. He thought he was going to burn to death during reentry. He could seem flames licking the outside of his ship. “I’m burning,” he told ground control. “Goodbye, comrades.”

The flames were just burning plasma, though. Gagarin’s capsule spun wildly, the result of coming in too fast, nearly causing him to black out. But he managed to eject from the capsule, as planned, at about 23,000 feet, still in his space suit, and land safely in a field in the Saratov Oblast, near the Volga River.

He instantly became a Soviet hero and an international celebrity.

Nowhere outside of the Soviet Union did his name resonate more than in the United States, where space flight was in its infancy. So galling was Gagarin’s success that President John F. Kennedy went before a joint session of Congress a month later, laying out an astonishing goal: The U.S. would put astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade, he said.

That speech set off one of the most ambitious American scientific projects of the 20th century. Early on, the mission needed a detailed map of the moon, to see where this proposed flight might land. To that end, the Aeronautical Chart and Information Center of the U.S. Air Force compiled the above lunar photo mosaic map in November 1962, using remote sensing imagery. Scientists and photographers had drawn and photographed the moon, dating back to the 17th century. But this was a project that needed a cartographer’s scientific skillset, as the National Geo Spatial–Intelligence Agency (the ACIC’s descendant) points out in a post about their work on the mission.

“Accurate coordinates of the sites needed to be determined in a coordinate system consistent with accurate vehicle orbit information,” said John Unruh, a former ACIC cartographer and scientist. The agency would go on to create hundreds of maps for the Apollo missions, including 3-D plastic models of the moon’s surface at proposed landing sites.

The following years were dangerous ones for both nation’s space programs.

On Jan. 27, 1967, three U.S. astronauts — Gus Grissom, Edward White II and Roger B. Chaffee — were killed when their Apollo 1 capsule caught fire during a training exercise at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Three months later, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed during an orbiting mission in a very flawed spaceship. His capsule hurtled back to Earth, its parachutes failing to open, killing him on impact. Intercepted radio communications showed that, as the module fell, he was screaming in rage at Soviet space officials for sending him on a doomed mission. Then, on March 27, 1968, Gagarin himself was killed in a training jet exercise.

The Apollo 11 Command Module. Photo: Smithsonian Institution.

Still, less than 16 months later, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon — an achievement once considered impossible and a demonstration of the United States’ now commanding lead in the space race. The landing module was put down in the Sea of Tranquility, a flat plain of dark lava that is roughly 700 kilometers in diameter. You can see it on the map above, just to the right of the middle center, as a broad, darker section that extends at a downward angle. It is to the left of the large round crater at center right.

It was there, with the help of a map made 238,900 miles away, that Armstrong took his “one small step” that was a “giant leap” for mankind.

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Venture Smith: The First Slave Narrative

Descendants of Venture Smith gather at his gravesite in East Haddam, Connecticut, during the town’s 2019 Venture Smith Day. Photo courtesy of Venture Smith Day Celebration Committee.

Delighted to write this post with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

“I was born at Dukandarra, in Guinea, about the year 1729.  My father’s name was Saungin Furro, Prince of the tribe of Dukandarra.”

That’s the opening line of Venture Smith’s “A Narrative of The Life And Adventures of Venture, A Native Of Africa: But Resident Above Sixty Years in the United States of America,” the earliest slave narrative in the United States, published in 1798.

The Library has an original copy of the 32-page pamphlet, preserved in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Publishing by the Charles Holt company, it is still in print 223 years after publication (you can also read it online for free) and is the basis for biographies of Smith and academic studies of the era.

Smith’s narrative is a rare account of slavery in Colonial New England, one of only a few ever published. It’s also one of the very few records of enslaved people who told of their lives in Africa, among them the handwritten autobiography of Omar ibn Said,  also preserved at the Library.

Today, the city of East Haddam, Connecticut, near the farm where Smith settled for the last decades of his life after buying his freedom, lists his gravesite as a tourist attraction and will celebrate the 25th annual Venture Smith Day this Saturday, Sept. 11. In 2006-07, archaeologists excavated his long-lost homestead and published a fascinating pamphlet, “The Venture Smith Homestead.” (The site is now part of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge and is not open to the public.)

“(The homestead) wasn’t quite in the place people thought it had been,” said Lucianne Lavin, the lead archaeologist on the project. “It was completely grown over, with only a few stone ruins. You’d never have known there had been three houses, a huge storage building, a barn.”

Smith’s story is a harrowing tale, filled with kidnappings, fistfights, years of hard labor and, finally, love and perseverance. Smith was 70, bent with age and nearly blind at the time he told his story, but he owned more than 130 acres of land, a waterfront compound on the Salmon River that included three houses, a dry dock, blacksmith shop and several warehouses. He was still married to his wife, Meg, whom he had worked for eight years to buy out of enslavement.

The title page of Venture Smith’s life story. Rare Book and Special Collections Division. 

“It gives me joy to think that I have and that I deserve so good a character, especially for truth and integrity,” he says near the end of his story (emphasis in the original).

The pamphlet was clearly intended as a rebuke to slavery, but the editor’s preface contains passages that are startling to modern sensibilities. Smith grew up “wholly destitute of all education but what he received in common with other domesticated animals,” they write. Still, the editors note his intelligence, drive and ambition. They tartly observe that “perhaps some white people would not find themselves degraded by imitating such an example.”

Smith’s story begins on the west African savanna, a couple of hundred miles inland. His real name was Broteer Furro and he was the son of a prince of Dukandarra (scholars have not been able to locate the place; it may have been a small kingdom that disappeared long ago).

Though privileged, his early life was traumatic. His mother fled with the children after an argument with his father, running into the wilderness. Broteer was perhaps 4 years old, as he recalled. She eventually left him with a kind farmer while she continued on with his siblings. He did not hear from his family again for more than a year, until his father sent for him after reconciling with his mother.

This 1743 map highlights the western savanna region of Africa. The map was made with Venture Smith was about 4 years old. Map: Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’ Anville. Geography and Map Division.

But shortly after his return, an army from a neighboring region rampaged through their village. His father was tortured to death in front of his family. “The shocking scene is to this day fresh in my mind, and I have often been overcome while thinking on it,” he dictated more than six decades later.

Broteer, his mother, siblings and hundreds of others were bound together and marched hundreds of miles to the coast. He does not say what became of his mother and siblings, but he was sold on the coast of modern-day Ghana, along with about 260 others, to the owner of a Rhode Island slave ship.

The ship’s captain paid “four gallons of rum and a piece of calico cloth” for the child and told him his new name was “Venture.” (Decades later, he would take the surname of his last owner, Oliver Smith.) The ship was likely the Charming Susannah, which departed Newport in late 1738 and returned in September 1739, according to Connecticut Humanities, a nonprofit division of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Middle Passage voyage was brutal; a quarter of the enslaved died of a smallpox outbreak. Most of the survivors were sold in Barbados, but a handful were brought to Rhode Island. Smith, then about 6 years old, was bought by George Mumford, a commercial farmer. He was soon assigned to carding wool and grinding corn, often subjected to physical abuse.

He grew into a tall, powerful man, often described as weighing more than 300 pounds, and so renowned for his feats of strength that he was later remembered as the “black Paul Bunyan.” In his early 20s, he married Meg, an enslaved young woman who worked for the same owner. For the next decade, he labored for one owner or another, fishing, working on ships in the bay, or chopping hundreds of cords of firewood.

He recounted several fights with his owners, trading punches and once being clubbed on the back of the head with a log. In April 1754, he and several others made a short-lived escape. Realizing they were going to be caught, he returned on his own, but not before his owner placed a runaway slave ad. It is the only known contemporary description of him, according to Connecticut Humanities: “… he is a very tall Fellow, 6 feet 2 Inches high, thick square Shoulders, Large bon’d, mark’d in the Face, or scar’d with a Knife in his own Country.”

The final chapter describes Smith’s life after he bought his freedom, at age 36. “My freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal,” he wrote.

Venture Smith’s farm was along the waterfront near the intersection of the  Salmon river. Map by Carrington Bowles, ca 1780. Geography and Map Division.

He worked for four years to buy the freedom of his sons, Cuff and Solomon, and then another four years to buy Meg’s freedom. They both then worked to buy the freedom of Hannah, their daughter.

Historians note there is little in the record that shows what his life was like as a free man, and that his autobiography includes almost nothing about his wife and children save their names and when two of them died.

But it is clear that he was a well-established figure in the community, said Lavin, the archaeologist. His farm and houses, she notes, was not a typical enterprise by European settlers, but more akin to a west African family compound. His sons and their families lived in the two other houses on the property (his daughter died as a young adult) and they were almost entirely self-sufficient. His sailed on Connecticut and Salmon rivers, hauling cargo, trading goods and repairing boats. He farmed and sold lumber that he had cut. He bought freedom for at least three other enslaved men. Perhaps the best measure of how well he was regarded, historians say, is the existence of his autobiography and that he was buried in a prominent place in the local church cemetery, even though he was not a member of the congregation.

But it was never an easy life. He never learned to read and write very well and was often  conned by whites who could. A wealthy businessman once falsely accused him of losing a barrel of molasses in shipment, sued him for it and then “insultingly taunted” him about it.

“But Captain Hart was a white gentleman, and I a poor African, and therefore it was all right, and good enough for the black dog,” he wrote.

That’s the voice that still commands attention, centuries later — a proud, defiant man, forging his way on a vast, often cruel continent.

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20 Years Ago Today: Remembering the First National Book Festival

Laura Bush (center), Dr. James Billington and others open the first National Book Festival Sept. 8, 2001 outside the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Photo by Yusef El-Amin

It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning on Sept. 8, 2001. I was one of hundreds of excited Library of Congress employees and volunteers getting ready to host the very first Library of Congress National Book Festival here in Washington.

This was before the Festival was a vast tent city on the National Mall (2002-2013) or a huge, expo-style event in the Washington Convention Center (2014-2019) – and certainly before it was the virtual event that we’ve seen in the past two years, compelled by the COVID pandemic. Back then, it was a totally new idea, envisioned by first lady Laura Bush, who founded the Texas Book Festival when she was first lady of that state. She suggested a national festival to then-Librarian of Congress James Billington at a reception at the Library the night before George W. Bush was to inaugurated as 43th U.S. president in a ceremony to be held just across the street.

A national book festival was a big idea and would be a big undertaking. We didn’t even have social media to talk about it back then. We advertised this new Festival the old-fashioned way: newspaper ads, announcements to TV, radio and other media, and good old word-of-mouth. Working as part the team responsible for publicity, I was frankly a little anxious as we approached our starting time. Would people show up?

Boy, did they ever. Thousands were on hand as Dr. Billington and Mrs. Bush formally opened the Festival at 9:30 a.m. (She went on to serve as the National Book Festival’s honorary chair through 2008.) “We’ve come together to revel in the joy of the written word,” she said to a big, cheerful crowd.

What a day it was! Some 30,000 book lovers of all ages crowded the halls of the Library’s Capitol Hill buildings and tents set up on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol to hear 60 of their favorite authors, visit with players from the NBA, listen to Library curators and hang out with Clifford the Big Red Dog. Writers signed books and posters, answered questions, and bumped elbows with their fans.

Streets around the Capitol and the Library were cordoned off, and it all felt like a small-town fair. I remember being on the plaza outside the James Madison Memorial Building, which had become a makeshift open-air dining area with a few food trucks. There I was, munching on a hot dog, when Mrs. Bush strolled by, casually checking in to chat with surprised festival-goers and enjoying the day just about as much as anyone.

Here’s a story from our Library of Congress Information Bulletin with more details about our first Festival. And here is a selection of author talks from that day.

Three days later, on September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks changed the world – and the Capitol Hill campus of the Library of Congress was not immune to those changes. Since that sunny, happy day, there have been lots of changes in the way we get around in Washington and on the Library’s campus, as well as changes to the National Book Festival through the years.

But none of these changes have kept the Library and our Festival sponsors from celebrating books, authors, poets and the love of reading with a nationwide audience every year. It’s been my great joy to have worked on every National Book Festival since it started. I may be biased, but I think this year’s will be the best one yet.

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Author Liz Carpenter, who was Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary and chief of staff during the Johnson administration, captivated a crowd in one of the author tents set up on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Photo by Christina Tyler Wenks

Library Announces Winners of 2021 Literacy Awards

On this International Literacy Day, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced that three organizations working to expand literacy and promote reading are the 2021 recipients of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards. The awards honor organizations doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work and recognize the need for the international community to unite in achieving universal literacy.

“Literacy develops the mind and the heart, engages the intellect and imagination, and builds wide-ranging knowledge of the world,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “Through the generosity of David M. Rubenstein, the Library of Congress is proud to honor and celebrate the achievements of these extraordinary organizations in their efforts to advance literacy and enable people to survive and thrive in the world.” This year’s recipients:

2021 David M. Rubenstein Prize ($150,000): Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
The Imagination Library, also known as Dolly’s Library, is an initiative of the Dollywood Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Dolly Parton in 1988. Dedicated to improving the lives of children by inspiring a love of reading, the Imagination Library provides books free of charge to families through local community partnerships.American Prize ($50,000): The Parents as Teachers National Center, St. Louis, Missouri
Parents as Teachers builds strong communities, thriving families, and children who are healthy, safe and ready to learn by matching parents and caregivers with trained professionals who make regular personal home visits during a child’s earliest years in life, from prenatal through kindergarten. Parents as Teachers (PAT) began in the 1980s and is now the most replicated home visiting model in the United States.International Prize ($50,000): The Luminos Fund, Boston, Massachusetts
The Luminos Fund provides transformative education programs to thousands of out-of-school children, helping them to catch up to grade level, reintegrate into local schools and prepare for lifelong learning. It delivers a joyful-learning approach in classrooms in Ethiopia, Liberia and Lebanon to help children cover three school grades of learning in 10 months.

The Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program also honored an 14 additional organizations for their implementation of highly successful practices in literacy promotion. For more details, see the complete announcement or visit the Literacy Awards website.

Library Legend John Y. Cole Retires

John Y. Cole stands before a portrait of Ainsworth Rand Spofford, his favorite Librarian of Congress. Photo by Shealah Craighead.

John Y. Cole is the historian of the Library of Congress and the former director of the Library’s Center for the Book. He began working at the Library in 1966 and is retiring this month.

Where did you grow up and go to school?

I was born and raised in Washington state, graduating from the University of Washington with degrees in history and librarianship. My grandfather was an itinerant linotype operator and newspaper editor who read to me frequently, managing to instill both printer’s ink and a love of reading in his grandson.

What first drew you to library work and ultimately to the Library?

At the University of Washington I was “lured” into library school by a wonderful teacher who introduced me to book and library history. My next lucky break came in 1964, when my two-year ROTC obligation took me to the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird near Baltimore, where fortunately my graduate library school degree was noticed.

As a result, and without my knowledge, 2nd Lt. Cole was not assigned to Vietnam with most of the rest of his class, but instead “stayed home” to head the Intelligence School Library. I learned about the Library of Congress (loved it from the start!) when I began visiting the Library’s Surplus Duplicate Collection to gather materials for my U.S. Army Intelligence School Library.

How did your career at the Library evolve?

I left the Army in 1966, knocked on the door of the Library’s Personnel Office and was shepherded into the 1966-67 professional intern program, then called special recruits. I served as the Library’s adviser for the program for the next several years; an early career satisfaction was being able to facilitate the opening up of this valuable “outsider” experience to qualified Library employees.

I soon found a job in the Collections Development Office in the Reference Department, which was a good “Library-wide” fit with my recent part-time enrollment in the American Studies Ph.D. program at George Washington University. My dissertation topic focused on Ainsworth Rand Spofford, Librarian of Congress 1864-1897.

My interest in Library history was one of the reasons that, in 1976, Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin asked me to chair his one-year task force on goals, organization and planning. This key experience led in 1977 to my appointment as the first (and at the time the only) staff member of the newly created Center for the Book.

What inspires you to study and write about the Library’s history?

During my initial training year at the Library, I read “The Story Up to Now: The Library of Congress 1800-1946,” by David C. Mearns, a distinguished Library veteran who joined the staff in 1918 and retired in 1967 — one year after I had arrived.

I was astonished to learn about the national library vision and accomplishments of Spofford, who then was a relatively unknown Librarian of Congress. Mearns encouraged me to take Spofford on as a dissertation topic. I did so and then followed up on a lead from an earlier issue of the Library’s Information Bulletin about Spofford descendants in the D.C. area. To my amazement and delight, these family members in Great Falls, Virginia, and also New York City had kept important Spofford manuscripts and documents as well as a color portrait — all eventually donated to the Library. I still am inspired by Spofford and his remarkable achievements.

What are a couple of standout memories from your career?

Overall, I’m grateful to have been able to contribute to the Library in several different ways, especially in helping increasing understanding of our unusual and somewhat complicated role in American government and culture.

Specifically, I was privileged through my 39 years of service as the founding director of the Center for the Book to work closely with Librarians of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin and James H. Billington — both strong personalities who also loved the Library.

I especially treasure the friendships I developed, in tandem with Dr. Billington, with first ladies Barbara Bush, the honorary chair of Center for the Book national reading promotion campaigns from 1989 to 1992, and in 2001 with Laura Bush, the “founder” and co-chair, with Dr. Billington, of the National Book Festival.

What’s a little-known fun fact you’ve uncovered about the Library?

In January 1898, “on behalf of the American home,” the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union urged “our National Library” to stop liquor sales in its restaurant on the third floor of the newly opened Jefferson Building. And the campaign apparently was successful.

What do you see as the most significant changes at the Library during your time here?

The continued expansion and improvement of the institution, thanks largely to better internal communication with the staff and with also with Congress, libraries, scholars and researchers, and the general public.

Concurrently, a growing awareness of the Library’s unique characteristics on the part of both its staff and its talented top leadership. Each of the Librarians of Congress “during my time” has brought different interests and talents to the institution, continuing the “balance” needed to continue a high standard of service to our wide range of constituents — local, national and international.

What will you do during retirement?

My wife, Nancy Gwinn, retired last year after a long career at the Smithsonian Libraries. Now that I’m finally (in her view) joining her ranks, we will have more time, especially for family and international travel. The D.C. area, however, will remain our home, with our condo in Arizona as a western outpost. And of course I’ll be working on an interesting Library history project or two wherever I am!

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The 2021 National Book Festival: Big Names, Great Books, Stellar Conversations

Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro. Photo: Andrew Testa.

No matter what kind of books and authors you love, the Library’s 2021 National Book Festival has a star-studded cast that you can watch – and chat with – in a 10-day series of events starting Sept. 17.

Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, who has dazzled us over the years with “Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go,” will be online to talk about his new book, “Klara and the Sun.” Joy Williams, the 2021 recipient of the Library’s Prize for American Fiction, debuts her new novel, “Harrow,” the week of the festival. Film stars Lupita Nyong’o and Michael J. Fox will be on hand to talk about their latest books, as will fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg. The New Yorker’s Patrick Radden Keefe, whose “Say Nothing” was a riveting account of Northern Ireland’s political violence, is here with his new bestseller, “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.”

In all, the festival will feature more than 100 authors, poets and writers in a range of formats under the theme of “Open a Book, Open the World.” The virtual programs will roll out over 10 days from Sept. 17-26.

Lupita Nyong’o. Photo:: Nick Barose.

Not sure what you want to see? You can get an hour-long preview of the festival with guest host LeVar Burton and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in a PBS special on Sept. 14 (check local listings). The pair will be back to kick off the festival in a live conversation on Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. ET.

Almost everything is online again this year, due to COVID-19 concerns, and will range from videos on demand to author conversations in real time and live question-and-answer sessions. Live events will also be recorded for viewing on demand, so you can check them out later. In addition to the schedule, linked to above, there’s the National Book Festival blog to keep you up to date with developments. You can also sign up for updates.

There’s the usual array of powerhouse writers, ranging from literary fiction, history and biography, science, lifestyle, teens and children, poetry and so on. Pulitzer Prize-winning historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Kai Bird will be here, as will organizational psychologist Adam Grant, whose bestselling books “Originals” and “Think Again” have challenged the way we think about…well, thinking.

Somalia-born model and food entrepreneur Hawa Hassan will talk about how she got her Basbaas Foods business going, along with her cookbook, “In Bibi’s Kitchen.” Also on the kitchen front, Trisha Yearwood will take a break from her singing career (a mere 15 million albums sold) to talk up her new cookbook, “Trisha’s Kitchen.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen. Photo: BeBe Jacobs.

In Young Adult fiction, Angie Thomas, latest in a long line of Mississippi authors, comes to us with “Concrete Rose,” a prequel to her debut bestseller, “The Hate U Give.” There’s also Traci Chee, of the Reader Trilogy fame, and, of course, Jason Reynolds, the Library’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will be here, too.

In fiction, it’s just crazy. In addition to Ishiguro and Williams, there’s Tana French, Roxane Gay, Yaa Gyasi, Elliot Ackerman, Alice McDermott, Viet Thanh Nguyen and George Saunders, among more than a dozen others.

For those of you in the D.C. area, there are a pair of live conversations scheduled. Crossword puzzle lovers will get a kick out of a Sept. 21 evening talk with maestros Adrienne Raphel and Will Shortz. Raphel is author of “Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them,” and Shortz is the longtime New York Times crossword puzzle editor.

The second event, Sept. 25, is Nikki Giovanni, the legendary poet and author, in conversation with Hayden. Chief on her mind will be her new book, “Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose.” The setting for both is still being determined, again due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation.

Be sure to bookmark the festival blog and website. See you there!

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The poster for 2021 National Book Festival. Artist: Dana Tanamachi.

The Islamic World Map of 1154

The world map of al-Idrisi in 1154. It’s upside down from the modern point of view — the south at the top, north at the bottom — and Mecca at the center top. Facsimile by Konrad Miller, 1928. Geography and Map Division.

This is a guest post by Sundeep Mahendra, head of the Research Access and Collection Development Section in the Geography and Map Division.

Early in the 12th century, King Roger II of Sicily commissioned Arab Muslim geographer and cartographer Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Idrīs al-sharif al-Idrīsī (or al-Idrisi) to produce a book detailing the geography of the known world.

Over the course of nine years, and drawing on earlier works by Ptolemy, Arabic sources, firsthand information from world travelers and his own experience, al-Idrisi in 1154 completed what became one of the most detailed geographical works created during the medieval period.

Consisting of 70 separate section maps with accompanying text, when put together the original sheets would have created a rectangular map 9 feet, 5 inches long. In 1928, Konrad Miller produced this re-creation of al-Idrisi’s original work.

To a modern viewer acclimated to north being placed at the top of a map, this view of the world may seem skewed or even upside down. However, orienting maps with the south at the top was a common practice in Islamic cartography. Viewed from this direction, Mecca, the most holy city in the Islamic world and its focal point, is at the top and most prominent section of the map.

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Back to School: Abe Lincoln’s Grammar Book

This 1846 or 1847 daguerreotype is the earliest known photograph of Abraham Lincoln. He was 37 and a  Congressman-elect from Illinois. Photo: Nicholas H. Shepherd. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Abraham Lincoln never really had a “back to school” moment, as the future president was raised on a farm and had less than a year of formal schooling. This didn’t mean he didn’t love learning, though. From an early age, he devoted intense effort to self-study through reading.

In 1831, when he was 22, Lincoln left his frontier home in southwestern Illinois for the bustling village of New Salem, Illinois. Over the next few years, he worked as a store clerk, dabbled in business, served as postmaster and engaged in a serious regimen of self-education. By today’s standards, he was old enough to be a college graduate, but still considered his education to be “defective.”

So, soon after arriving in New Salem, Lincoln contacted the local schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, about the availability of a proper grammar for his study. Graham apparently recommended Samuel Kirkham’s 1828 volume, “English Grammar in Familiar Lectures.”

This was an influential, all-in-one volume that went through many editions over the years. It was filled with rules of grammar and syntax, sentence structure, instructions on pronunciation and basic composition, as well as warnings against provincialisms, such as “ain’t” “izzent,” and “askst.” There was a guide to common but erroneous  manners of speech (“Give me them there books”) paired with the the correct way (“Give me those books.”)

Lincoln’s copy of Kirkham’s “English Grammar.” Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

“This work is mainly designed as a Reading-Book for Schools,” the introduction read. “In the part of it, the principles of reading are developed and explained in a scientific and practical manner, and so familiarly illustrated in their application to practical examples as to enable even the juvenile mind very readily to comprehend their nature and character, their design and use, and thus to acquire that high degree of excellence, both, in reading and speaking, which all desire, but to which few attain.” (emphasis in the original.)

Lincoln definitely wanted to attain that “high degree of excellence.” When it turned out that the only available copy of “Grammar” in the area was at the farm of John Vance, some six miles out of town, Lincoln didn’t hesitate. After the 12-mile round trip, and a few chores to help him earn the book, Lincoln returned home with his prized possession. It is the earliest book known to have been in Lincoln’s possession and is now in the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

It was noted that Lincoln always had the book with him. He would later remark that it was his study of grammar that shaped his success and later gave voice to his eloquent speeches. Most likely he had it in hand one day when he acted on behalf of Denton Offutt, the owner of the general store at which he clerked. He was handling a receipt between James Rutledge and David Nelson. Today, that receipt is still attached to the inside front cover of the book.

Lincoln’s signature on the Offutt receipt. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

It was while working at Offutt’s store that Lincoln is said to have accidentally overcharged a customer. At Offutt’s insistence, Lincoln traveled the many miles to make amends for the error, earning him the sobriquet “Honest Abe.”

Meanwhile, that receipt is of more than just passing interest. The first party of the receipt, Rutledge,  owned the local tavern, and his daughter, Anne, stayed with him. One version of this story, most likely apocryphal, is that Abe first became well acquainted with Anne in 1833 at her father’s tavern. Although she was engaged, the long absence of her intended freed Anne to eventually fall in love with young mister Lincoln. A promise was made to marry once she was released from her commitment.

Whatever the actual circumstances, they were on such good terms that Abe wrote on the title page: “Anne M. Rutledge is now learning grammar.” Whether this was a sweet double entendre between two young lovers, or just a polite inscription between friends, remains a matter of conjecture.

But more was not to come. Typhoid fever swept through New Salem in the late summer of 1835. Anne died of complications of the disease on August 25 — 186 years ago this week. Lincoln is said to have slid into a deep, dark depression. He eventually recovered, went on to work as a lawyer, and eventually married Mary Todd Lincoln seven years later.

The lessons he learned from Kirkham’s “English Grammar” stayed with him and helped him give the nation some of the most memorable speeches in its history.

Lincoln wrote “Anne M. Rutledge is now learning grammar” on the title page of his copy of Kelsey’s “Grammar.” Rare Book and Special Collections division. 

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Summer Beauties: The Golden Age of Travel Posters

This Depression-era Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project poster urged Americans to travel. Artist: Alexander Dux. Prints and Photographs Division.

Jan Grenci, a reference specialist in the Prints & Photographs Division, wrote a short piece about travel posters in the July/August issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. It’s been expanded here.

Some of the Library’s most popular Free to Use and Reuse photographs and prints are the travel posters from the golden age of the art form, the 1920s to the 1960s, when artists used graphic design, bold lines and deep colors to render destinations more as a mood than just a place.

Take, for example, that image above. The massive scale of the stalagmites and stalactites, the huge cavern opening — they combine to dwarf the man and woman in the foreground. The blueish/purple geologic formations, lit softly from the right, are offset by the shadows in deep black. She appears to be dressed in a skirt, blouse and (one hopes) sensible walking shoes; he, his hat at a jaunty angle, is clad in a coat, jodhpurs and riding boots, complete with a gentleman’s walking stick. They appear not just to be enjoying a day’s hike so much as contemplating the immense passage of time itself.

SEE AMERICA, the poster commands. The America in question is timeless, majestic and full of  adventures. No

And that was the idea of the posters — to evoke a mood. One could feel the color and excitement of Times Square, the sea air in a lush garden in Puerto Rico, the spray from an eruption of Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.

A Trans World Airlines poster for New York., with blocks of color showcasing the bright lights, big city idea of Times Square. Artist: David Klein. Prints and Photographs Division.

This golden era came to an end in the 1960s, when ad agencies began to go with flashy color photographs; the wide-angle view of the blue domes and white cliffside houses of  Santorini, the caldera far below; the sunlight and golden beaches of Acapulco; snow-capped Mount Fuji, always from a distance, framed by blue sky above and green fields below. Lovely images, no doubt, but they put place over mood.

The Library holds thousands of travel posters from this era, designed to inspire viewers to get out on the road. Henry Ford’s Model T ignited a revolution in personal travel — you didn’t have to book passage on a train that was restricted to a certain track You could get in your car and go most anywhere, taking as much time and as many routes as you had the interest to explore. The family road trip was born.

Many of the Library’s collection of travel posters were created by the Work Projects Administration between 1936 and 1943. The WPA, a New Deal agency designed to help lift the nation out of the Great Depression, included Federal Project Number One, which hired writers, photographers, actors, artists and musicians to help keep the nation’s arts alive.

Other posters (like the blue cave) were created the United States Travel Bureau, designed to boost domestic tourism. They featured national parks and encouraged all to “See America” — the catchphrase on a number of  them.

Blue skies and blue waters. Bermuda in the 1940s, as advertised by the nation’s Department of Tourism Artist: Adolph Treidler. Prints and Photographs Division.

But there was plenty of international travel, too, and the posters from the era reflect a similar approach of mood over place. The Bermuda Islands Department of Tourism and Trade Development was going all in on tropical romance and summer breezes in this lovely blue-water, blue-sky poster, pictured above. A horse-drawn carriage, wind coming in off the Atlantic and a secluded resort at water’s edge. That’s not a bad mood. Not at all.

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