Today the Librarian of Congress named the 25 films that will comprise the National Film Registry’s entries for the year 2010. These are films that have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance that warrants their preservation for posterity. All in all, there are 550 films in the registry. Although there is great variety in this year’s …
Monday would have been the 100th birthday of a poet whose translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” brought me one of the really memorable reading experiences of a lifetime. Robert S. Fitzgerald, who awoke to his interest in poetry at a high school in Springfield, Illinois and whose work translating Homer’s Greek into English – while …
Mark your calendars … then dust them for fingerprints. Blockbuster mystery authors David Baldacci, Sandra Brown and Kathy Reichs are coming to the Library of Congress next week, and you can meet them. It’s a Monday preview to the National Book Festival (to be held on the National Mall Saturday, Sept. 25 from 10 a.m. – …
Book-lovers attending the 10th Annual National Book Festival on the National Mall Sept. 25 will have a chance to receive, free of charge, the official festival bookmark, reflecting the winning design in a contest for kids in grades K-8 sponsored by festival bookseller Borders. It’s a very special bookmark, far more than a mere placeholder …
If you follow popular music, you likely saw in June that Sir Paul McCartney—in Washington to receive the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song—not only sang at the White House but also, the night before that elegant gig, performed at a venue at the Library known as the Coolidge Auditorium. You might also …
This is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, program officer with the Library’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program In 1975, Alan Jabbour and I began a project to document the fiddle playing of Senator Robert C. Byrd, who passed away a few days ago at the age of 92. Sen. Byrd was aware that …
Saturday, Sept. 25 will mark the 10th anniversary of the Library of Congress National Book Festival – “A Decade of Words and Wonder.” If you’re among the hundreds of thousands of people who have attended the event in its first nine glorious years, or just want to know more about this celebration of books, the …
Thursday, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington had an announcement sure to thrill hundreds of thousands of people who’ve loved the National Book Festival during its storied run, “a decade of words and wonder.” He announced that David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, is donating $5 million …
One of the complaints heard from non-fans of classical music is that so much of it reaches back centuries. As one wag, who preferred jazz, put it: “Mozart hasn’t written anything decent in 200 years!” And yet classical, as a genre, continues to unfold even in our lifetimes. Which means there may be among us the …