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Posted by: Wendi Maloney
In this segment of a regular feature on authors who use the Library's collections, we interview Walter Stahr, a lawyer turned historian. His latest biography, published in 2022, is "Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival," a look at the influential treasury secretary and later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court during the mid 19th century.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Taylor Healey-Brooks, the Librarian-in-Residence in the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division, was the lead author on a remarkable new Library resource guide about the connections between Haiti and the United States. She talks about the project here.
Posted in: Hispanic Division
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” had been an epic religious and literary work for 150 years when a publisher in Florence attempted to do something that had never been done — illustrate it in a printed book. The year was 1481. Gutenberg’s revolutionary printing press was just 26 years old. Nicolaus Laurentii took on the …
Posted in: Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library Work and Employees, Poetry, Rare Book and Special Collections, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
During the Russian Revolution, a wealthy young Jewish woman fled Moscow to publish the world's first illustrated children's books in Hebrew. Today, the only know copy of three of those books are preserved at the Library.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Jewish American History, Kids
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library's Free to Use and Reuse copyright-free prints and photographs are among the most popular items in the Library's vast collections. Here, we explore free photos of aircraft -- a futuristic plane from 1910, barnstorming wing walker Lillian Boyer and a romantic Pan American poster advertising flights to the Caribbean.
Posted in: Free to Use and Reuse
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Wanda Whitney, head of the Library's Local History & Genealogy Section, tells how using DNA research led to her discovery of a genetic mutation that had health implications for her entire family. It's part of the Library's Black History Month focus on families and health.
Posted in: African American History, Genealogy, Library Work and Employees
Posted by: Neely Tucker
"The Metropolitan Opera Murders," the latest entry in the Library's Crime Classics series, is a novel from a woman who knows the score. Helen Traubel, a longtime star soprano who performed at the Met for years, wrote the book in 1951, shortly before she left the opera to pursue a career in popular entertainment.
Posted in: Music, Performing Arts, Theater, Women's History, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Rosa Parks, one of the most consequential Americans of the 20th century, was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her activism was galvanized decades before the Montgomery bus boycott by the sexualized violence of whites against Blacks in her native Alabama. This activism is featured in this short documentary by the Library of Congress, which holds her papers.
Posted in: African American History, Civil Rights, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, Today in History
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library kicks off Black History Month with a new By the People crowdsourcing project -- transcribing the papers in the William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection.
Posted in: African American History, American Revolution, Civil Rights, Civil War, World War II