Here’s a sampling of some of the highlights in the Library’s blogosphere from February. Inside Adams: Science Technology & Business Turf Wars on the Football Field Jennifer Harbster debates the differences between natural and synthetic turf grass on the football field. In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog In Memory of Patty Andrews and the Andrews …
Mark Dimunation stands in a vault near the rare-book reading room and eyes a dozen volumes on a half-filled shelf, each bearing a small green ribbon. “It’s been a little slow,” says Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, as he scans the titles. The books all were drawn from the “Thomas …
(The following is a guest post by Audrey Fischer, editor of the Library of Congress Magazine.) It’s been 50 years since pioneering women’s rights activist Betty Friedan stunned the nation with her controversial book, “The Feminine Mystique.” In what became known as a manifesto, Friedan urged women to eschew the cult of domesticity and address …
The following is a guest post by Jason Steinhauer, program specialist in the Library’s John W. Kluge Center. Lindsay Tuggle, Ph.D., teaches English Literary Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her dissertation dealt with mourning and ecology in the work of Walt Whitman. As a Kluge Fellow, she has been researching and writing her …
The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. These collections, housed in the Manuscript Division—and the Library’s holdings in other formats such as rare books, photographs, films, sound recordings, sheet music and maps—inform us about the time and tenor of each of their administrations. Unique to …
Three-hundred-and-twenty-five words made up the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. So simple a start for what would become a pivotal document in our nation’s history – one that would also provide groundwork in passing the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. Currently on view in the Library’s “The Civil War in America” exhibition through Feb. 18, …
What if Abraham Lincoln recorded his innermost thoughts as he moved toward the realization that he must end slavery? What if he lost that diary, but a recently discovered letter suggests that the diary is still out there? Such is the premise of “The Lincoln Letter” (Tor/Forge, 2012) by William Martin, his latest mystery novel …
Thanksgiving is just a day away, and I’ve been noticing on Facebook, friends posting what they are thankful for this holiday season. Those statuses certainly have given me pause to count my own blessings. First and foremost, I am thankful for my family, who, no matter how far away I am from them, help me …
While the Civil War imposed hardships on both sides, the South found it particularly difficult to adapt to new realities of daily life. The blockade of Southern seaports and the prohibition of trade with the North quickly depleted food supplies throughout the Confederacy. Farmers became soldiers, and a large percentage of crops were used to …
