It seems you can't turn around these days without tripping over a fabulous online digital collection. While searching this morning for an intriguingly-titled Civil War pamphlet (“Interior Causes of the War: The Nation Demonized and its President a Spirit-Rapper," by "A Citizen of Ohio"), I found...
Recently arrived as a very kind gift from two former fellows: Thomas Barclay (1728-1793): Consul in France, Diplomat in Barbary , by Priscilla H. and Richard S. Roberts (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2008). Kudos to the Robertses for applying a dose of rigorous scholarship to this very...
. . . with the news of Barack Obama's election? Historian (and former ICJS Fellow ) Joseph J. Ellis wrote an interesting opinion piece in the L.A. Times yesterday addressing this very question: I never expected to see an African American president in my lifetime. Like the sudden implosion of the...
The latest Journal of Southern History (volume LXXIV no. 4, or 74 for us Roman-numerically-challenged people) carries an article by former ICJS fellow Brian Steele, "Thomas Jefferson, Coercion, and the Limits of Harmonious Union" (pp. 823-854). In the reviews section we have several items of note...
For my Fake TJ Stories files, and for the edification of our 6 devoted readers, I offer the following Reference Question Tale: It is claimed, by websites and other sources various and sundry, that Thomas Jefferson, upon hearing of a meteorite crash in Connecticut in 1807 and its subsequent...
The arrival of the latest William and Mary Quarterly (or WMQ , as I affectionately call it) has occasioned its usual flutter of excitement among its devotees. The following items in the table of contents caught my eye: " Tom Paine's Common Sense and Ours ," by Sophia Rosenfeld " Culture and...
It's not quite brand new, but a number of our staff were positively googly-eyed over this book, so I thought it worth mentioning: A Pattern Book of Tools and Household Goods , published by the Early American Industries Association in cooperation with the http://www.pem.org " t
...and who doesn't, really? Well, this is the museum exhibit for you: "Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005" kicked off just this past weekend at Winterthur Museum .
Sometimes it's a little scary how persistent apocryphal stories about Jefferson are. Case in point: the perennial (for us) question, "Did Thomas Jefferson shoot someone on the White House lawn?" There's no evidence that he did , and strangely enough, the source of this particularly bizarre story...
Say we're a library. Specifically, a library attached to a world famous (indeed, a U.N. World Heritage-designated) historic site. We have an incredible array of information about the founding father for whom we work: scholarly monographs, popular books, documentaries, journal and magazine articles, primary sources, secondary sources--heck, we'd even have quaternary and quinary sources if such exist.
