To celebrate the start of the 2023 season, the Library is pleased to announce a new digital collection: Early Baseball Publications. The collection, which will grow over time, provides online access to more than 120 early baseball publications.
Mark Dimunation has displayed his love for rare books in print, onstage and on television since he was appointed chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library — the largest collection of rare books in North America — a quarter of a century ago, in 1998. He retires this week, telling stories about great books and great personalities he's come across during his tenure.
A priest, a detective and an impoverished poet might sound like the setup to a joke - but Father Duffy, Sergeant Ben Goldsmith and Tim Brandon are no laughing matter in the gripping new addition to the Library of Congress Crime Classics, "A Gentle Murderer" The landmark 1951 Dorothy Salisbury Davis novel, called "one of the greatest detective stories of modern times" by famed critic Anthony Boucher, is the most recent addition to the Library's series of crime novels that have fallen from popular attention.
The handwritten Esther scroll, inked onto parchment and protected by a cylindrical case of silver filigree, is a delicate work of beauty and religious faith, more than a century old. It tells the biblical story of Queen Esther of Persia and how she helped save the nation’s Jews from annihilation by a wicked ruler. The …