The Library's new exhibit, “The Declaration’s Promise: A Revolutionary Idea," charts the history of the country in its attempts to create a more perfect union over the past 250 years, as measured against the lofty promises made in the Declaration of Independence.
-Victor Willis, the lead vocalist and primary songwriter for the Village People, died yesterday at the age of 74, his wife announced in a statement this morning. The Library inducted "Y.M.C.A." into the National Recording Registry in 2020 and we caught up with him for a delightful phone interview. He politely recounted how he had written one of the most iconic songs in American pop music history. We reprint it today in honor of his passing.
Baseball, basketball, football, blues, jazz, rock, Hollywood, Broadway, comic books — what would the planet look like without the great spewing fountain of American pop culture? As celebrations for A250, the country's 250th birthday, get underway, the Library's vast holdings document the global impact of American films, television, theater, music, comic books and even fast food. That impact can’t be quantified — but much of it can be catalogued.
"Save the Last Dance for Me," first recorded by The Drifters in 1960, has long been a staple of American pop culture as a love song at weddings, anniversaries and countless other romantic occasions. It's been recorded by more than 500 artists over the decades. The Library recently acquired the collection of Doc Pomus, the legendary songwriter who wrote or cowrote "Dance" and many other hits ("Viva Las Vegas," "This Magic Moment"). The collection contains the invitation to the 1957 wedding reception for Pomus and actress Willi Burke on which he scrawled out "Save the last dance for me." The bittersweet irony -- Pomus had polio as a child, could not walk unaided as an adult and encouraged his bride to dance with others at the reception. The iconic song followed.
The Library has two fascinating copies of “The Federalist,” the influential collection of newspaper essays that urged the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. These copies have deep personal ties to three Founding Fathers. One was owned by Elizabeth Hamilton, the wife of Alexander Hamilton (who wrote most of the 85 essays that composed the volume). She gave her copy to her sister, Angelica, who in turn gave it to Thomas Jefferson, her friend. Jefferson put it in his personal library, which became the foundation of the Library of Congress. The other copy belonged to James Madison, who wrote more than two dozen "Federalist" essays, and, like Jefferson, served as President of the new nation.
The 2026 World Cup is underway and the Library is watching with the rest of the planet. Stop by the Hispanic Reading Room to check out “For the Love of the Game,” a small display that explains the evolution and appeal of a sport that has become one of the world’s most influential cultural forces. The display complements a new World Cup LibGuide developed by the Library’s Latin American, Caribbean and European divisions.
In 1864, while America was in the depths of the Civil War, photographers Nelson and Roswell Moore set out to photograph what they believed were the last surviving men who had fought in the American Revolution. The men were all over 100 years old. The photographs spawned a popular book, "The Last Men of the Revolution," and the Library today preserves the photographs of those last survivors.
Geraldine Brooks, the the 2025 recipient of the Library’s Prize for American Fiction, talked about her 10 books, her career as a foreign correspondent and her marriage to the late Tony Horwitz, a fellow reporter, author and Pulitzer Prize winner, during a recent evening at the Library.
The moon always has been an object of fascination for mankind, but once President John F. Kennedy pledged in 1961 that the U.S. would send a manned spacecraft there within a decade, one of the first questions was entirely practical: Where would they land? An extraordinary map, the USAF Lunar Wall Mosaic, produced the year after Kennedy's speech, helped provide the answer. The 1969 Apollo 11 mission landed safely in an area called the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility). Today, a copy of the map is preserved at the Library as one of the most important -- and practical -- maps in human history.
