Whoever is curating the Smithsonian Libraries' Tumblr page of vintage book illustrations ("Turning the Book Wheel") is having way too much fun for government work! Huffington Post has put together this slideshow of their favorites, but it's worth bookmarking the original site and checking back from time to time for more Puckish gifs and captions.
Hope that perks up your mid-week! Over at the University of Iowa Special Collections, Colleen Theisen uses gifs to present such items as miniature alchemists' books and Cris de Paris, a set of 23 cards, each featuring a “cry” heard around Paris circa 1829.
Below, from a scrapbook on The Hanlon Brothers, an influential circus and variety act. Performing first as children in the 1840s and continuing into the early 20th century, they became known for their acrobatics and death-defying stunts such as the “Perilous Ladder.”
Who else but the Smithsonian would have the very first issue of Wonder Woman?
 You'll find more comic book lore and history here.

Whilst I and my fellow tennis fans are gearing up for the last grand slam of the year in Flushing Meadows, I thought I'd share these colorful vintage posters of the sport. They come from a recent auction catalog by Swann Galleries.
I also find these photos of golden-age Hollywood stars on the court quite enjoyable. First up is Kate Hepburn, one of the sportiest stars of them all. In the photo at right, she poses for a publicity picture with professional athlete Gussie Moran on the set of Pat and Mike. (Courtesy Everett Collection.)
The  photos below show Judy Garland and Paulette Goddard playing tennis at the Ambassador Hotel for charity.
Nice pickup, Barbara Stanwyck! Then it's game, set, and match. Below, Ginger Rogers really goes for her shots—and manages to look fetching at the same time (just as she did in those impossibly intricate routines with Astaire).
Above, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard goof off in their own giddy fashion. Below, pals Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart try a spot of table tennis, while the happiest couple in Hollywood, Bacall and Bogey, take a break from same.
Balancing Bacall's devastating voice and looks and her aura of patrician self-possession was a down-to-earth sense of humor and fun. That's why Bogart (and the couple's fans) loved her so much. She'll be greatly missed, and remembered fondly forever via her films.

The Public Domain Review recently featured a rarity called The London Guide and Stranger’s Safeguard against the Cheats, Swindlers, and Pickpockets (1819). Its frontispiece is pictured at left. From its "Glossary of Cant Terms" comes mizzle ("to get away slily"), dive ("to enter the pocket)", patter ("examination before magistrates"), toggery ("clothing"),  and bon ton ("high life women").
"It was once the seat of the world's mightiest empire and the most populous city on the planet, while the list of historical figures, notable personalities, and literary, artistic, musical, and dramatic talents who have called it home is simply staggering." From Jonathan Oates'Unsolved London Murders: The 1920s & 1930s to the photo book A Century of Royalty (culled from the pages of the Daily Mirror) to Jane Austen's London to PBS's Secrets of Underground London to Peter Ackroyd's London Under,  there's something for everyone in the Daedalus Books Spotlight on the great  metropolis of London. 

George V (left) with Generals Foch and Haig after the Battle of the Somme in World War I. (A Century of Royalty)

How do you curate themed displays online when you're a virtual bookseller? One way is through the ever-changing "Spotlight" features you'll find by clicking on a tab at the top of our main page. And if you sign up for e-mail notifications (top left of main page), you can get a discount on your next order as well as being informed of all future Spotlights. Recent ones have been "A Taste for Adventure,""Back to School for Grownups,""Paris,""Duke Ellington," and "The 150th Anniversary of the Civil War." Our Forums are pretty fab too (watch for one beginning in the fall on the Roosevelts.)

Princess Margaret with the Beatles. (A Century of Royalty)

If you enjoy watching historical crime series, snap up the Sergeant Cribb DVD set before it sells out. (He's a detective working for Scotland Yard in the Victorian Era; we also have the Father Brown complete collection and a documentary on the notorious serial poisoner William Palmer.)

A delightful new online resource has been created by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., which has opened up its visual archives to the public here. (This is the announcement of its free terms of use.) At left is The Folger's statue of Puck, the mischievous fairy from A Midsummer Night's Dream, by New York sculptor Brenda Putnam (1890–1975). She was the daughter of Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress.
In addition to its priceless Shakespeare folios, quartos, manuscripts, scholarly books, and other resources on the Bard, "the world's largest and finest collection of Shakespeare materials" houses a beautiful recreation of an Elizabethan theater, in which plays and concerts are staged in an intimate fashion. (The American Shakespeare Center, in Staunton, Virginia, has a replica of the Blackfriars Playhouse, putting on classic plays by Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and successors.)

A Blackfriars production of Hamlet.

The Folger's Elizabethan theater.

 Below are a few samples of the newly available images from the Folger's collection.

Act IV, Scene 1: Titania: "Come set thee down upon this flowery bed"; a Currier & Ives lithograph.

Below, Falstaff and a portrait of the actor Edmund Kean.

Opera reminiscences,1829. Desdemona and Otello, dedicated to the admirers of William Shakespeare, by William Heath.

By Faustin, 1875

Romeo and Juliet, the tomb scene (Act 5, Scene 2); artist and date unknown.

A Pair of Spectacles, or, The London Stage in 1824–5, by Charles Williams (detail below).

The Seven Ages of Man, published by William Cole, early to mid-19th century (detail below). An illustration of Jacques' monologue in Act II, Scene VII of As You Like It.

All the world’s a stage,
        And all the men and women merely players;
        They have their exits and their entrances,
        And one man in his time plays many parts,                       
5      His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
        Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
        And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
        And shining morning face, creeping like snail
        Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,  
10    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
        Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
        Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 
        Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
        Seeking the bubble reputation
15    Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
        In fair round belly with good capon lined,
        With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 
        Full of wise saws and modern instances;
        And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
20    Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
        With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
        His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
        For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
        Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
25    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
        That ends this strange eventful history,
        Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
        Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Check out Daedalus Books' ever-changing and always available resources on the Bard here!
See more Daily Glean illustrated features on Shakespeare here.

From young adult to adults-only, you'll doubtless find something to your taste in "Reel Good Reads," our current Spotlight roundup of books that have been adapted to film. I'm itching to see the movie version of The Book Thief (above), a novel I found absolutely riveting. And conversely, having seen the movie first, I'm looking forward to reading and savoring the ins and outs of the complex narrative that comprises David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas. I loved the Keira Knightley film about Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire (below), so I definitely want to delve into Amanda Foreman's award-winning biography of same.
And did you know that James Franco had starred in an adaptation of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying?  The LA Review of Books gave Franco props for his directing:

Faulkner’s famously fragmented novel is composed of 59 first-person chapters, written in the voices of fifteen different characters. Translating such a polyglossic text to the screen poses some daunting challenges, which may explain why Franco is the first director to make the attempt. In Faulkner’s novel, form and content converge: the disjointed narrative structure, which lacks a presiding narrator, manifests the isolation that defines the characters’ lives, which are marked by hidden secrets and unspoken desires. In an effort to convey the splintered, often opaque quality of the novel’s writing, Franco employs several unconventional techniques, including hand-held camera work, split screen compositions, and rapid cutting between simultaneously occurring events.

The cast of Franco's As I Lay Dying.

At times, these devices work effectively, such as when the Bundrens’ wagon and the coffin splash into the river on the first day of their journey. Here, the divided screens convey the watery struggle through the eyes of different characters, enhancing the sense of confusion and chaos. In several of the film’s most compelling moments, Franco offers refreshingly direct access to Faulkner’s monologues, such as Cash’s 13-point explanation of the coffin design or Dewey Dell’s sensuous description of her love affair in the cotton fields, which are delivered in tightly-framed shots of the characters looking unswervingly into the lens…. As I Lay Dying is one of Faulkner’s most formally daring works, but it is also one of his most socially and politically engaged novels. As Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner explains, Faulkner started writing the book the day after the Wall Street collapse in October 1929, and completed it in a short, two-month burst. As such, it can arguably be considered America’s first novel of the Great Depression. While there’s no indication that Franco intended the film to be a political work of art, it comes five years into the deepest economic recession since the 1930s. Seen in context of the current era’s mortgage foreclosures, declining wages, and financial suffering, Franco’s adaptation of Faulkner’s novel about the plight of an impoverished family isolated and stymied by economic hardship and social obstacles reminds us that high-minded works of art — even a period piece like this one — can also speak to contemporary historical concerns.

On a related note of page to screen, The Washington Post praised the late, great Oscar-winner Robin Williams's "world-class performance" as an honest salesman whose life is shattered in Seize the Day (1986), the only novel by Saul Bellow ever adapted to film.
Have you any favorite novel to film adaptations?

"To be or not to be..."

Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice In Our Campaign Against The Fairy Kingdom by Reginald Bakeley. How Tea Cosies Changed the World by Loani Prior. Raising Witches; Knitting Historical Figures; How to Make Love While Conscious; A Popular History of British Seaweeds. If none of these titles tickle your fancy, then perhaps one of the tomes illustrated below will. They're from the ongoing "Weird Book Room" feature at Abe Books. And if you really want to delve into the arcane, have a look at The Toast's '100 Actual Titles of Real Eighteenth-Century Novels.' Among the offerings: The Book!! Or, Procrastinated Memoirs. Atrocities Of A Convent. He’s Always In The Way. Horrible Revenge, Or, The Monster Of Italy!! How It Happened That I Was Born. It Was Me, A Tale By Me, One Who Cares For Nothing Or Nobody. The Male-Coquette; Or, The History Of The Hon. Edward Astell. Memoirs Of An Old Wig. A Modern Anecdote Of The Ancient Family Of The Kinkvervankotsdarsprakengotchderns. The Peaceful Villa, An Eventful Tale. Read, And Give It A Name.
Actually, Elizabeth Hawes' book title Fashion Is Spinach as featured in the Weird Book Room is not as silly as it sounds. Taken from a New Yorker cartoon, it epitomizes this great American designer's practical yet classy approach to creating clothes for women (Katharine Hepburn was a big fan). New York Times writer Alice Gregory recently wrote a blog on Hawes, and you can read more about her in Bettina Berch's Radical by Design: The Life and Style of Elizabeth Hawes, which I highly recommend. (Used copies are very pricey online; perhaps a new edition is called for?)
Browse our many discounted, illustrated books on fashion here!

Detail from La Vie de Monseigneur Saint Denis, 1517, depicting Parisian people at leisure. Love the dancing bear and the wine-drinking party on the Seine!

“Il n’y a que deux endroits au monde où l’on puisse vivre heureux: chez soi et à Paris. ("There are only two places in the world where one can live happy: at home and in Paris.”)—Hemingway
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”―Hemingway

A game of bocce. From the Chansonnier de Paris, c.1280—1315. (The British Library Board)

“Everything ends this way in France—everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs—everything is a pretext for a good dinner.”—Jean Anouilh
These quotes and the lovely images above and below put me in mind of a recent Spotlight feature we did called Paris in the Springtime. The illuminations are from a new Folio Society edition of Paris in the Middle Ages by Simone Roux.

Shop-lined Paris streets. From Le livre du gouvernement des princes by Gilles Romain.

We always maintain a particularly deep collection of great titles relating to Paris and its history, as well ones reflecting its importance as a capitol of art and design (with books on Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Fabergé, Lalique, et al.); as a longtime nexus of fashion innovation; as a center of superior food and music; and as a source of marvelous films, novels, and poetry. Click here to peruse our current offerings. At right: Andre Lhote, Expressive Head, 1920-24. From Matisse, Picasso, and Modern Art in Paris: The T. Catesby Jones Collections at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the University of Virginia Art Museum.
Selected Paris-related titles in stock now:

• The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France
• The Louvre and the Masterpiece
• The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the '50s, New York in the '60s: A Memoir of Publishing's Golden Age
• The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection
• Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time
• The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929
• The Food Lover's Guide to Paris: The Best Restaurants, Bistros, Cafes, Markets, Bakeries, and More City Fashion Paris 
• The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
• The Montmarte Investigation: A Victor Legris Mystery
• the Elizabeth Taylor movie Paris When It Sizzles
• the CD anthology Cafe De Paris: 50 Grands Succes Francais, with Piaf, Trenet, Chevalier, Grappelli, Montand, Josephine Baker, and more.

As Baker sang, "J'ai deux amours": Paris et toi.

Wraithlike and pale (except for the occasional woman of color), the zombie-esque high fashion models glide and pose in tantalizingly brief glimpses of the season's hottest (and coolest) fashion looks. So far, idioms spotted in New York's Fall Fashion Week 2014 include a return to tasteful classics and '60s attire, accompanied by the usual quota of sternum baring. (Above and left, designs by Jason Wu. Oh how those bones stick out! Below, outfits by Ralph Rucci and Marc Jacobs.)
"Rucci’s spring collection was filled with experiments in texture and transparency, the tension between good taste and tawdriness" writes Robin Givhan of The Washington Post. "A floor-length satin skirt in an abstract chocolate print is worn with a transparent chiffon shirt and an embroidered bra. An ivory pantsuit looks utterly simple until the model turns away to reveal a tiny keyhole opening in the jacket’s back seam just below the nape of the neck – a wink to an incorrigible voyeur."
At right is a lovely Belle Époque evocation by Monique L'Huillier. Below, Marchesa seemed to have mined the past as well.
Downton Abbey actress Michelle Dockery seems a bit like a little girl lost at the Marc Jacobs show. And Uma Thurman looks pretty devastatin' at the Carolina Herrera do, wouldn't you say?
Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour is a fixture at the toniest events. Here she sits with retired soccer star David Beckham and son Brooklyn at the Victoria Beckham Spring/Summer 2015 show. (AP Photo/Richard Drew.) Below are some of the former Spice Girl's creations.
If you couldn't toddle off to New York and yearn to contemplate fashion in historical perspective, we have some beautifully illustrated books on the subject—including ones on the styles of Paris and Berlin; the singular artistry of Jean Muir; the high-fashion footwear of Beth Levine, Mabel Julianelli, and Salvatore Ferragamo; a life of the influential and colorful tastemaker Diana Vreeland; Schiaparelli & Prada: Impossible Conversations (from the Met's superb show contrasting their work); Roberto Capucci: Timeless Creativity (stunning and extravagant creations by "the father of Italian fashion"); an overview of designer bags (The Handbag: To Have & to Hold); historical books such as Fashion in the 1920s, The Victorian Tailor: An Introduction to Period Tailoring and Fashion in the Time of The Great Gatstby; and many how-to books on sewing or knitting your own couture.
Above, an artsy dress by Alexander Wang. "Wang’s collections exude frenetic energy – a gulping down of life’s daily stimuli. Watching one of his shows is a bit like mainlining the Internet…. Nicki Minaj, Miguel and Rihanna sit in the front row keeping the crowd happily gawking until show time."—Robin Givhan, Washington Post

Photo by Nancy Levine

"She was the whole package."—Diane Reeves

 "It took forever for everybody to get inside and sit down, because people kept going downstairs to the gym to give her flowers . . . Then she was there, in the deafening roar of applause from her worshippers, a baby-skinned zaftig beauty with a penchant for thrift-shop attire."—Rex Reed, writing about a Laura Nyro concert in Stereo Review

"Her songs reached the depth of despair but never lost a glorious ecstasy in the singing. Like all great artists she wrestled with mortality at a young age – she wrote 'And When I Die' when she was 19. (Bundle up my coffin cause it’s cold way down there.)"—Suzanne Vega, Reflections on Laura Nyro 

"It’s like an ice cream soda and I love anybody who records my music . . . I’m very flattered.”—Laura Nyro  

Sometimes when I get advance notice of a new CD we'll be carrying I get a delightful frisson of anticipation, and such was the case with composer, pianist, and arranger Billy Childs' brilliant brainchild, Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro. I imagine she would just adore its eclectic spirit. The album "brims with subtle yet striking moments," as Jim Fusilli observed yesterday in The Wall Street Journal.

Delicately applied piano and acoustic guitar by Mr. Childs and Dean Parks, respectively, and the orchestral strings form the supple spine of a suspenseful title track featuring vocalist Lisa Fischer. Supported by saxophonist Steve Wilson and featuring a knotty, gorgeous interlude by Mr. Childs, "Gibsom Street" is sung with dark fire by Susan Tedeschi. On "New York Tendaberry," Ms. Fleming's voice, Mr. Ma's cello and Mr. Childs's piano welcome the listener with beauty and purpose. Mr. Childs said those three compositions were elemental to his understanding of Nyro's essence as an artist…. "I knew it couldn't be a single singer," he said. "Her songs are so varied. Her output is like one long interconnected opera. Each song is a chapter in a book. She creates a world through symbolism and metaphor. Once you're in, it's an incredible world."
Though Mr. Childs dug deep into the Nyro catalog, he also included new readings of a few familiar tunes. Shelving the Copland-like gallop of the Nyro and Blood, Sweat and Tears versions, Mr. Childs's minor-key arrangement of "And When I Die" allows Ms. Krauss to expose a different meaning to the lyric. His bluesy interpretation of "Save the Country," written by Nyro in the aftermath of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, features Mr. Botti's mournful trumpet. Nyro's reading was angry yet upbeat; in their interpretation some four decades later, Mr. Childs and vocalist Shawn Colvin seem to question whether faith and optimism are still characteristics that define America.
In an era when so-called classic rock celebrates rubbish just because it's familiar, Mr. Childs has rediscovered and polished genuine gems from a long time ago. "It's not only characteristic of a certain generation or a certain time," he said of Nyro's music. "Her music and her beauty: It's not a mission for popularity. There's a message that's beautiful that you want to share with everybody."

Friends described Nyro as sweet, playful, and funny; she called songwriting "a happy profession."

Nyro was a poetic songwriter with a beautiful gift for language. She looked on herself as a rebel and cherished the freedom to write about whatever she wanted to: “I was always interested in the social consciousness of certain songs. My mother and grandfather were progressive thinkers, so I felt at home in the peace movement and the women’s movement, and that has influenced my music.”
In high school, she sang with friends in subway stations and on street corners: “I would go out singing, as a teenager, to a party or out on the street, because there were harmony groups there, and that was one of the joys of my youth.” Some of her favorite musicians were John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Pete Seeger, Curtis Mayfield, Van Morrison, Miles Davis (seen below), and girl groups such as The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, and the Shirelles.
This excerpt from a 1970 Down Beat interview shows how Nyro fought to maintain the integrity of her musical vision.

“I wasn’t interested in singing my music,” she says, “but I thought maybe I wanted other people to do it. I didn’t see very daring people . . . they counted me out because my material was different—that’s silly. One man told me to go home and write What Kind of Fool Am I? If anybody could be miscast, it’s me—that’s been my problem, because, if you put my music in the wrong place, it becomes a freak. I don’t fall into categories and people constantly want to put me in categories, but I refuse....
The Verve/Forecast album (originally entitled More Than a New Discovery but later renamed The First Songs … is not wholly bad, but Miss Nyro likes to ignore it by referring to her initial Columbia effort as her first. “They (Verve) picked the arranger and producer for me,” she complains, “they picked them and said ‘This is whom you must record with.’ And so my arranger (Herb Bernstein) went home and wrote about six arrangements in three hours. I mean, I work months and hours and years and a lifetime on my songs, and if something was a bit difficult, he’d just chop it right out . . . like if one of my changes was a bit difficult. They really kind of brought down my music. There was no balance at the beginning of me . . . there was no peace, there was no comfort, there was certainly no joy, there was no understanding and there was no sensitivity. Just incredible fights, and I was always crying—I mean, that’s the way all those old people really know me.”

Obviously, she prevailed, becoming so beloved that she could sell out Carnegie Hall in an hour.
This excerpt from Nyro's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction is not a great recording in terms of sound quality, but it's an absolutely stellar, right on, and heartfelt tribute by Bette Midler.

He was an explorer, a hunter, a historian, a rancher, a soldier, New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President of the United States, and ultimately its President. When Theodore Roosevelt took office, Booker T. Washington was the first person he asked to come to Washington to consult with him. He created a national scandal by having a Black man to dinner in the White House, something that had never been done before. And as detailed in Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, it wasn't the firsttime T.R. bucked protocol. Morris's biography is the first in a trilogy that has been showered with awards (the others being Theodore Rex, which covers his presidential years; 1901 to 1909, and Colonel Roosevelt, which explores the final 10 years of T.R.’s life; 1909 to 1919).

"There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid."—T.R., An Autobiography, 1913

Edmund Morris was born in Nairobi, Kenya, but came to the the US in 1968, later becoming an American citizen. "Wanting to learn about my country of adoption, I couldn’t think of a better way to learn all about America, its character and its history and its essential principles than by studying the life of Theodore Roosevelt" he told host Brian Lamb on on C-Span's program Q&A. "There was a preliminary apprehension of him when I was a small boy in Kenya. At the age of ten, I looked in the civic history of Nairobi, which was published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the city. And it had this historic photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt coming to Nairobi, Kenya in 1909 on his great safari for the Smithsonian. And I remember identifying, as a small boy, with that picture; the smile, the snarl, the spectacles. There was something about him that attracted me. And quarter of a century later, I ended up writing his biography."
This interview was so fascinating to me in regard to the writing of all three biographies that I've excerpted portions of it below.

Roosevelt stumping, 1910

BRIAN LAMB: I want to go back to the first words you wrote about Theodore Roosevelt in 1979 in your first of three books. And you started it off in a prologue, "New Year’s Day, 1907 at 11 o’clock precisely, the sound of trumpets echoes within the White House and floats through open windows out into the sunny morning." Do you remember what mood you were in when you had to write those first words?
EDMUND MORRIS: Yes, it was a mood of complete despair. I’d been trying for months to get the book started. I knew in my head that I was going to start with New Year’s Day of 1907 because I’d found out quite by accident, browsing the Guinness Book of World Records that on January the 1st, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt shook more hands than any other person in history. And I thought I could see the book growing out of that reception, when he received the American people.
And for months I researched the day; discovering to my amazement, how dense and detailed newspaper records were in those days. People didn’t have television, so they needed details, visual detail and olfactory details, all sorts of atmospheric stuff. So I absorbed all this mass of material and then I had to sit down and write a prologue, in which the reader, as it were, meets the President, as though the reader’s in that line.

LAMB: As you look back on your process of getting to know Theodore Roosevelt, how did you do it? Where did you go? Where did you start to see what he was all about?
MORRIS: I began to get a physical feel for him, which is important for a biographer; one must have the ability to imagine this person in the room or at – within visible distance. One must have a palpable feeling for the subject or it’s impossible to write about them. I began to get that feeling after about two years of research; after I’d been out to the Badlands of Dakota where he was a young ranchman in the 1880s, after I’d been out to Sagamore Hill and I’d held in my hand this gold lock of hair from the head of his dead young wife, Alice Lee, after I’d read his diaries written at Harvard and had turned over the pages that his hand had turned over.
I remember coming across one page describing his honeymoon night with this beautiful Alice Lee and I was naturally interested to see what he wrote about that night. In his handwriting, he said our sacred happiness cannot be written about and I had the distinct feeling that I, posterity, future biographer, was being addressed by him. This is private; stay out of my life. So that’s when the consciousness of him began.
ROOSEVELT'S INTELLECT
LAMB: How have you changed your mind about Theodore Roosevelt in the last 30-plus years?
MORRIS: I’ve been increasingly impressed by the quality of his intellect. It was always obvious to me, right from the start, he was a superbly bright man, but I thought his smarts were primarily political. And indeed they were through most of his middle years, but after he left the White House in March of 1909 and began a life of journalism and book-writing, the quality of his mind deepened and broadened to an astonishing degree.
Some of the essays that he wrote about the conflict between science and religion and imagery in medieval literature and subjects like that and it the year 1911, when he was completely out of political power. These essays are truly impressive. They reflect reading in three languages; English, German and French, some Italian too, enormous Catholic intelligence and erudition. And to think that this man was also a superbly successful President of the United States is to realize that he was – he was a, as somebody once said, a polygon; a man of many, many dimensions.
POSSIBILITY OF T.R. RUNNING FOR THIRD TERM; THIRD PARTY
LAMB: Given what’s going on in the country right now in the United States, what can we learn from this final book about what happens in a country where people are unhappy or, in his case, he was the third party candidate? What can we learn about third parties and when did he run as a third party candidate and why?
MORRIS: He ran as a third party candidate in 1912, but exactly a century ago, in 1910, shortly after he’d come back to the country after having been a year away, T.R. became the spokesman, the oracle of this new force arising in America called progressivism. It was a largely middle class movement whose common denominator, apart from passion, was a mounting dissatisfaction with government and federal government, a feeling of exclusion from the tight relationship between Congress and corporations and capitalistic privilege.
So this white middle class passionate movement developed in the later years of T.R.’s presidency, largely inspired by his own gradual swing to the left. And it more or less asked him; drafted him back into politics as its spokesman in the summer of 1910. So the midterm elections that subsequently took place exactly 100 years ago marked the emergence of this new progressive party. It wasn’t quite a party yet; it didn’t have a capital P, but it was a formidable movement, which in two short years after that election mutated into a real party, the third party, the Progressive Bull Moose Party of 1912 and fought the most successful third party candidacy in our history.
LAMB: Why did he not run in 1908?
MORRIS: Well at the end of his very successful presidency, he was full of smarts and young. He was not yet 50. But he sort of knew, in his heart of hearts, that if he had another term, which he could have had on a silver platter; if he served another four years he would begin to be corrupt, begin to be too self-righteous, too domineering. It was never a question of financial or political corruption with T.R., but he sensed he’d had too much power too long and he deeply believed that an American President should serve only a finite time and follow the example of George Washington and retire after two terms....
T.R.'S HUMOR
MORRIS: He was one of the funniest men who ever lived. His humor was like Mark Twain’s. It came pouring out all the time. And unfortunately, transcriptions of these speeches tend to be from the actual typed script that he would hand out to reporters, so his improvisations, his witticisms, the jokes he would tell are not there in the transcripts. But there is – there is so much testimony from people who knew him that he was hilariously funny.
And when he wanted to be funny on paper, as in the long letters he wrote describing his grand tour of Europe in 1909 and his participation in King Edward the VII’s funeral; these letters are so funny that they could have been written by Charles Dickens or Mark Twain. They have in fact been published as a book, ”Cowboys and Kings.” So one of the delights about working on him all these years has been to write about somebody who was so funny.

Are you a fan of film director Wes Anderson? See what you think of his Jules et Jim-esque video ad for Prada's "Candy" fragrance! (It's his second short for Prada, after Castello Cavalcanti, which  debuted at the Rome Film Festival, starred Jason Schwartzman, and paid tribute to the films of Federico Fellini.)
You also might enjoy Hotel Chevalier, in which lovesick hotel patron Jason Schwartzman  is visited by the woman (Natalie Portman) who pushed him into his Parisian hideaway.
We currently have a discounted copy of Anderson's The Darjeeling Limitedfor sale. What's your favorite of his films? Darjeeling?  Rushmore? Moonrise Kingdom? The Fantastic Mr. Fox?

Helen Beatrix Potter was a fascinating woman. Her story is dramatized in the film Miss Potter starring Renee Zellweger, and the Public Domain Review recently ran a ripping overview of her career. At the National Trust's Beatrix Potter Gallery in Hawkshead, Cumbria (near her cherished Hill Top farmhouse), you can see her beautiful  paintings and learn about her life. Along with photos and first editions, they have original illustrations for 20 of the 23 little storybooks; more than 700 watercolors, ink drawings, and greetings cards designed by Potter; butterfly cabinets; and more. (When she died in 1943, Beatrix left 4,000 acres of land, including 15 farms, to the care of the National Trust.) Above left is a sketch of flower borders, Victoria and Albert Museum. You can peruse our Potter books here, and please enjoy the sampling of her work below.

Potter was born in London in 1866, but her summer holidays as a child were often spent in Hertfordshire, with her grandparents at Camfield Place in Essendon. She described it as "the place I love best in the world." This original illustration from the British Museum comes from The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909).

Above, Jemima Puddle Duck. As The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published on 2 October 1902, Potter already had prepared The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester (her own favorite).

Potter often wrote with a particular child in mind. She remarked that the secret to the success of The Tale of Peter Rabbit was that it was addressed to "a real live child … not made to order."

Do you have a favorite Beatrix Potter character? (Right: 'Simpkin Housekeeping', c.1902. Tate Museum.) "The world of realism and romance" applies to her own work, as well as to her perception of landscape—don't you think? Below, Renee Z. as Miss Potter.

Having spent our evenings last week watching Ken Burns epic PBS series The Roosevelts—An Intimate History, I'm sure many of us have turned to the expert authors Burns relied on to construct this superb documentary. One of that ilk is historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. I've been dipping into her The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, which garnered her the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and was chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Time, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other major publications. The Associated Press called it “a tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue.”
As we learned in the series, Teddy Roosevelt soaked up print media like a sponge. Right now I'm engrossed in Goodwin's description of the changes that ensued in the meat-packing industry after he read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

In the end, a fairly comprehensive meat inspection bill emerged. "We cannot imagine any other President whom the country had ever had, paying any attention at all to what was written in a novel" the New York Evening Post remarked. "In the history of reforms which have been enacted into law," Beveridge [the bill's Senate sponsor] proudly noted, "there has never been a battle which has been won so quickly and never a proposed reform so successful in the first contest."

It was not long after that that the Pure Food and Drug Act was enacted.
Interestingly, many reviews remarked on how novelistic Goodwin's book is. Here's the New York Times Book Review

If you find the grubby spectacle of today's Washington cause for shame and despair — and, really, how could you not? — then I suggest you turn off the TV and board Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest time machine.... Goodwin directs her characters with precision and affection, and the story comes together like a well-wrought novel...[Goodwin puts] political intrigues and moral dilemmas and daily lives into rich and elegant language. Imagine 'The West Wing' scripted by Henry James.

Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks (which used Goodwin's Team of Rivals as the basis for Lincoln) has already optioned The Bully Pulpit for a movie. I'm betting it will be a corker.
As Abigail Adams said to her husband John so long ago as he attended the Continental Congress: "Remember the ladies." Here is Goodwin on "The Women of the Progressive Era."

And  in this video the Pulitzer Prize winner presents the five essential things you should know about Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Progressive Era.
In this excerpt from the book's opening chapter, Roosevelt returns to New York City for a hero's welcome after two terms in office and more than a year abroad touring Africa and Europe. (A five-mile parade up Broadway was attended by an estimated one million people.)

ROOSEVELT IS COMING HOME, HOORAY! Exultant headlines in mid-June 1910 trumpeted the daily progress of the Kaiserin, the luxury liner returning the former president, Theodore Roosevelt, to American shores after his year's safari in Africa.
Despite popularity unrivaled since Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt, true to his word, had declined to run for a third term after completing seven and a half years in office. His tenure had stretched from William McKinley's assassination in September 1901 to March 4, 1909, when his own elected term came to an end. Flush from his November 1904 election triumph, he had stunned the political world with his announcement that he would not run for president again, citing "the wise custom which limits the President to two terms." Later, he reportedly told a friend that he would willingly cut off his hand at the wrist if he could take his pledge back.
Roosevelt had loved being president -- "the greatest office in the world." He had relished "every hour" of every day. Indeed, fearing the "dull thud" he would experience upon returning to private life, he had devised the perfect solution to "break his fall." Within three weeks of the inauguration of his successor, William Howard Taft, he had embarked on his great African adventure, plunging into the most "impenetrable spot on the globe."
For months Roosevelt's friends had been preparing an elaborate reception to celebrate his arrival in New York. When "the Colonel," as Roosevelt preferred to be called, first heard of the extravagant plans devised for his welcome, he was troubled, fearing that the public response would not match such lofty expectations. "Even at this moment I should certainly put an instant stop to all the proceedings if I felt they were being merely 'worked up' and there was not a real desire . . . of at least a great many people to greet me," he wrote one of the organizers in March 1910. "My political career is ended," he told Lawrence Abbott of The Outlook, who had come to meet him in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, when he first emerged from the jungle. "No man in American public life has ever reached the crest of the wave as I appear to have done without the wave's breaking and engulfing him."
Anxiety that his star had dimmed, that the public's devotion had dwindled, proved wildly off the mark. While he had initially planned to return directly from Khartoum, Roosevelt received so many invitations to visit the reigning European sovereigns that he first embarked on a six-week tour of Italy, Austria, Hungary, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, and England. Kings and queens greeted him as an equal, universities bestowed upon him their highest degrees, and the German Kaiser treated him as an intimate friend. Every city, town, and village received him with a frenzied enthusiasm that stunned the most sophisticated observers. "People gathered at railway stations, in school-houses, and in the village streets," one journalist observed. They showered his carriage with flowers, thronged windows of tenement houses, and greeted him with "Viva, viva, viva Roosevelt!" Newspapers in the United States celebrated Roosevelt's triumphant procession through the Old World, sensing in his unparalleled reception a tribute to America's newfound position of power. "No foreign ruler or man of eminence could have aroused more universal attention, received a warmer welcome, or achieved greater popularity among every class of society," the New York Times exulted.
"I don't suppose there was ever such a reception as that being given Theodore in Europe," Taft wistfully told his military aide, Captain Archie Butt. "It illustrates how his personality has swept over the world," such that even "small villages which one would hardly think had ever heard of the United States should seem to know all about the man." The stories of Roosevelt's "royal progress" through Europe bolstered the efforts of his friends to ensure, in Taft's words, "as great a demonstration of welcome from his countrymen as any American ever received."

In the week preceding his arrival in America, tens of thousands of visitors from all over the country had descended upon New York, lending the city's hotels and streets "a holiday appearance." Inbound trains carried a cast of characters "as diversely typical of the American people as Mr. Roosevelt himself . . . conservationists and cowboys, capitalists and socialists, insurgents and regulars, churchmen and sportsmen, native born and aliens." More than two hundred vessels, including five destroyers, six revenue cutters, and dozens of excursion steamboats, tugs, and ferryboats, all decked with colorful flags and pennants, had sailed into the harbor to take part in an extravagant naval display.
An army of construction workers labored to complete the speaker's platform and grandstand seating at Battery Park, where Roosevelt would address an overflow crowd of invited guests. Businesses had given their workers a half-holiday so they could join in the festivities. "Flags floated everywhere," an Ohio newspaper reported; "pictures of Roosevelt were hung in thousands of windows and along the line of march, buildings were draped with bunting."
The night before the big day, a dragnet was set to arrest known pickpockets. Five thousand police and dozens of surgeons and nurses were called in for special duty. "The United States of America at the present moment simulates quite the attitude of the small boy who can't go to sleep Christmas Eve for thinking of the next day," the Atlanta Constitution suggested. "And the colonel, returning as rapidly as a lusty steamship can plow the waves, is the 'next day.' It is a remarkable tribute to the man's personality that virtually every element of citizenship in the country should be more or less on tiptoes in the excitement of anticipation."
Shortly after 7 a.m. on June 18, as the bright rising sun burned through the mists, Theodore Roosevelt, as jubilant with anticipation as his country, stood on the bridge of the Kaiserin as the vessel headed into New York Harbor. Edith, his handsome forty-eight-year-old wife, stood beside him. She had journeyed halfway around the world to join him in Khartoum at the end of his long African expedition. Edith had found their year-long parting, the longest in their twenty-three years of marriage, almost unbearable. "If it were not for the children here I would not have the nervous strength to live through these endless months of separation from Father," she wrote her son Kermit after Theodore had been gone only two weeks. "When I am alone & let myself think I am done for."
Edith was no stranger to the anxiety of being apart from the man for whom she "would do anything in the world." They had been intimate childhood friends, growing up together in New York's Union Square neighborhood. She had joined "Teedie," as he was then called, and his younger sister Corinne, in a private schoolroom arranged at the Roosevelt mansion. Even as children, they missed each other when apart. As Teedie was setting off with his family on a Grand Tour of Europe when he was eleven years old, he broke down in tears at the thought of leaving eight-year-old Edith behind. She proved his most faithful correspondent over the long course of the trip. She had been a regular guest at "Tranquillity," the Roosevelts' summer home on Long Island, where they sailed together in the bay, rode horseback along the trails, and shared a growing passion for literature. As adolescents, they were dancing partners at cotillions and constant companions on the social scene. Roosevelt proudly noted that his freshman college classmates at Harvard considered Edith and her friend Annie Murray "the prettiest girls they had met" when they visited him in New York during Christmas vacation.
In the summer of 1878, after his sophomore year, however, the young couple had a mysterious "falling out" at Tranquillity. "One day," Roosevelt later wrote, "there came a break" during a late afternoon rendezvous at the estate's summerhouse. The conflict that erupted, Roosevelt admitted, ended "his very intimate relations" with Edith. Though neither one would ever say what had happened, Roosevelt cryptically noted to his sister Anna that "both of us had, and I suppose have, tempers that were far from being of the best."
The intimacy that Edith had cherished for nearly two decades seemed lost forever the following October, when Roosevelt met Alice Hathaway Lee. The beautiful, enchanting daughter of a wealthy Boston businessman, Alice lived in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, not far from Cambridge. The young Harvard junior fell in love with his "whole heart and soul." Four months after his graduation in 1880, they were married. Then, in 1884, only two days after giving birth to their only child, Alice died.
A year later, Theodore resumed his friendship with Edith. And the year after that they were married. As time passed, Edith's meticulous and thoughtful nature made her an exemplary partner for Theodore. "I do not think my eyes are blinded by affection," the president told a friend, "when I say that she has combined to a degree I have never seen in any other woman the power of being the best of wives and mothers, the wisest manager of the household, and at the same time the ideal great lady and mistress of the White House."
Their boisterous family eventually included six children. Three of the six were standing next to their parents on the bridge of the ocean liner: twenty-year-old Kermit, who had accompanied his father to Africa; eighteen-year-old Ethel; and twenty-six-year-old Alice, the child born to his first wife.
The girls had joined their parents in Europe. Along the rails of the four upper decks, their fellow passengers, some 3,000 in all, formed a colorful pageant as they waved their handkerchiefs and cheered.
Although wireless telegrams on board the ship had alerted Roosevelt to some of the day's planned activities, he was surprised to learn that President Taft had assigned the massive battleship South Carolina as his official escort. "By George! That's one of my ships! Doesn't she look good?" an overwhelmed Roosevelt exclaimed when he saw her gray bulk pulling near. "Flags were broken out from stem to stern in the ceremony of dressing the ship," reported the Boston Daily Globe, while "a puff from the muzzle of an eight-pounder" signaled the start of a 21-gun salute, the highest ceremonial honor, generally reserved for heads of state. Sailors clad in blue lined the decks of the warship, as the scarlet-uniformed Marine Band played "The Star-Spangled Banner." The cannon roar of the South Carolina was followed by the rhythmic volley of salutes and whistles from the dozen or more additional naval ships in the bay. President Taft had clearly gone to great lengths, Captain Butt proudly noted, "to add dignity to the welcome and to extend a warm personal greeting to his predecessor."

From the deck, Roosevelt spotted the tugboat carrying the reporters whose eyewitness accounts of the spectacular scene would dominate the news the following day. As he leaned over the rail and vigorously waved his top hat back and forth to them, they stood and cheered. To each familiar face, he nodded his head and smiled broadly, displaying his famous teeth, which appeared "just as prominent and just as white and perfect as when he went away." Then, recognizing the photographers' need to snap his picture, he stopped his hectic motions and stood perfectly still.
During his presidency, Roosevelt's physical vigor and mental curiosity had made the White House a hive of activity and interest. His "love of the hurly-burly" that enchanted reporters and their readers was best captured by British viscount John Morley, who claimed that "he had seen two tremendous works of nature in America -- the Niagara Falls and Mr. Roosevelt." One magazine writer marveled at his prodigious stream of guests -- "pugilists, college presidents, professional wrestlers, Greek scholars, baseball teams, big-game hunters, sociologists, press agents, authors, actors, Rough Riders, bad men, and gun-fighters from the West, wolf-catchers, photographers, guides, bear-hunters, artists, labor-leaders." When he left for Africa, the "noise and excitement" vanished; little wonder that the members of the press were thrilled to see him return.
Shortly after the Kaiserin dropped anchor at Quarantine, the revenue cutter Manhattan pulled alongside, carrying the Roosevelts' youngest sons, sixteen-year-old Archie and twelve-year-old Quentin, both of whom had remained at home. Their oldest son, twenty-two-year-old Theodore Junior, who was set to marry Eleanor Alexander the following Monday, joined the group along with an assortment of family members, including Roosevelt's sisters, Anna and Corinne; his son-in-law, Congressman Nicholas Longworth; his niece Eleanor Roosevelt; and her husband, Franklin. While Edith anxiously sought a glimpse of the children she had not seen for more than two months, Roosevelt busily shook hands with each of the officers, sailors, and engineers of the ship. "Come here, Theodore, and see your children," Edith called out. "They are of far greater importance than politics or anything else."
Roosevelt searched the promenade deck of the Manhattan, reported the Chicago Tribune, until his eyes rested on "the round face of his youngest boy, Quentin, who was dancing up and down on the deck, impatient to be recognized," telling all who would listen that he would be the one "to kiss pop first." At the sight of the lively child, "the Colonel spread his arms out as if he would undertake a long-distance embrace" and smiled broadly as he nodded to each of his relatives in turn.
When Roosevelt stepped onto the crimson-covered gangplank for his transfer to the Manhattan, "pandemonium broke loose." The ship's band played "America," the New York Times reported, and "there came from the river craft, yachts, and ships nearby a volley of cheers that lasted for fully five minutes." Bugles blared, whistles shrieked, and "everywhere flags waved, hats were tossed into the air, and cries of welcome were heard." Approaching the deck where his children were jumping in anticipation, Roosevelt executed a "flying leap," and "with the exuberance and spirit of a school boy, he took up Quentin and Archie in his arms and gave them resounding smacks." He greeted Theodore Junior with a hearty slap on the back, kissed his sisters, and then proceeded to shake hands with every crew member.
Around 9 a.m., the Androscoggin, carrying Cornelius Vanderbilt, the chair¬man of the reception, and two hundred distinguished guests, came alongside the Manhattan. As Roosevelt made the transfer to the official welcoming vessel, he asked that everyone form a line so that he could greet each individual personally and then went at the task of shaking hands with such high spirits, delivering for each person such "an explosive word of welcome," that what might have been a duty for another politician became an act of joy. "I'm so glad to see you," he greeted each person in turn. The New York Times reporter noted that "the 'so' went off like a firecracker. The smile backed it up in a radiation of energy, and the hearty grip of the hand that came down upon its respondent with a bang emphasized again the exact meaning of the words."

When Roosevelt grasped the hand of Joe Murray, the savvy political boss who had first nominated him for the state legislature years before, it must have seemed as if his public life had come full circle. "This takes me back 29 years," he said, "to the old Twenty-first Assembly district when I was getting a start in politics." Earlier he had warmly welcomed Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge, his closest friend for more than a quarter of a century, and Archie Butt, who had served as his devoted military aide before taking up the same position with President Taft. Jacob Riis [left], the Danish immigrant whose book, How the Other Half Lives, had greatly influenced Roosevelt when he was police commissioner of New York City, received a fraternal welcome and "the broadest of smiles." Roosevelt clasped him with both hands, exclaiming, "O, Jake. I've got so much to tell you." His face grew somber as he glimpsed Beverly Robinson, who conjured memories of McKinley's assassination. "This boy was with me on top of Mount Mary," he mused, "when the sudden news came that I had become President." Nothing, however, could dampen his innate joviality for more than a moment. "Why, hello, Stimson, old sugar trust," he laughed, his eyes twinkling, as he approached Henry Stimson, the government's special counsel in the famous trust case. "Oh, friend, this is good. I can't tell you how I feel," he confided to Frank Tyree, the Secret Serviceman who had protected him loyally for years. On and on he went, his personal greetings for all interspersed with expressions of outright delight: "Fine! Fine! Oh, it's simply great!""George, this is bully!"
When Vanderbilt suggested it was time to go up to the bridge to acknowledge the thousands of people massed solidly on both the New Jersey and the Manhattan sides of the river, Roosevelt hesitated. "But here are the reporters," he said, turning to the members of the press eagerly taking down his words. "I want to shake hands with them." Indeed, at every stop during the long day, he made sure to deliver a special welcome to the members of the press. "Boys, I am glad (emphasis on the glad) to see you. It does me good to see you, boys. I am glad to be back." Clearly, that pleasure was reciprocated. "We're mighty glad to have you back," shouted one exuberant reporter.
From the time reporters had accompanied the Colonel to Cuba -- helping transform him and his intrepid Rough Riders into a national icon -- Roosevelt had established a unique relationship with numerous journalists. He debated points with them as fellow writers; regardless of the disparity in political rank, when they argued as authors, they argued as equals. He had read and freely commented upon their stories, as they felt free to criticize his public statements and speeches. Little wonder, then, that these same journalists celebrated Roosevelt's return from Africa, flocking to lower Manhattan to welcome him home. For the members of the press, the story of Roosevelt's homecoming was not merely an assignment -- it was personal.
Reporters present at the festivities remarked how "hale and hearty" the fifty-one-year-old Roosevelt looked, tanned and extremely fit. "It is true that the mustache, once brown, has grown grayer, but the strong face is not furrowed with deep wrinkles and the crows feet have not changed the expression which is habitual to the man who is in robust health and has a joy in living." After the long African expedition he displayed a leaner physique, but overall, he seemed "the same bubbling, explosively exuberant American as when he left." Archie Butt, however, detected "something different," though at first he could not put his finger on it. After talking with Lodge, the two men speculated that as a citizen of the world, not simply an American, Roosevelt had developed "an enlarged personality," with a "mental scope more encompassing."
At Battery Park, where the Androscoggin was due to dock at around 11 a.m., an immense crowd had gathered since early morning, straining for sight of the ship that would bring Roosevelt onto American soil. A reporter captured this mood of anticipation in his story of a stevedore who, in the midst of unloading cargo off another ship, laid aside his hook in hopes of glimpsing Roosevelt. His foreman shouted at him: "You come back here or I'll dock you an hour." The stevedore, undaunted, retorted: "Dock me a week. I'm going to have a look at Teddy."
"There he is!" rose the cry, soon confirmed as a beaming Roosevelt came ashore to a rendition of "Home, Sweet Home" by the Seventy-first Regimental Band. The uplifted cheers that greeted "the man of the hour" as he disembarked were said to exceed the "echoing boom of saluting cannon and the strident blast of steam whistles."
Straightaway, Roosevelt headed from the pier to the speaker's platform. He was in the midst of shaking hands with cabinet members, senators and congressmen, governors and mayors when his daughter Alice cried, "Turn around, father, and look at the crowd." Outspread before him was "one vast expanse of human countenances, all upturned to him, all waiting for him." Beyond the 600 seated guests, 3,500 people stood within the roped enclosure, and beyond them "unnumbered thousands" on the plaza. Still more crammed together on the surrounding streets. It was estimated that at least 100,000 people had come to Battery Park, undeterred by the crushing throngs and the oppressive heat and humidity. From a ninth-floor window of the nearby Washington Building, "a life-size Teddy bear" belted with a green sash was suspended. A large white banner bearing Roosevelt's favorite word, "Delighted," was displayed on the Whitehall Building, where "from street level to skyline every window was open and every sill held as many stenographers and office boys and bosses as the sills could accommodate." Clearly, this was not a day for work!

"Is there a stenographer here?" Roosevelt asked, as he prepared to speak. Assured that one was present, he began, his voice filled with emotion: "No man could receive such a greeting without being made to feel very proud and humble. . . . I have been away a year and a quarter from America and I have seen strange and interesting things alike in the heart of the wilderness and in the capitals of the mightiest and most highly polished civilized nations." Nonetheless, he assured the crowd, "I am more glad than I can say to get home, back in my own country, back among the people I love. And I am ready and eager to do my part so far as I am able in helping to solve problems which must be solved. . . . This is the duty of every citizen but it is peculiarly my duty, for any man who has ever been honored by being made president of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the debtor of the American people." For those who wondered whether Roosevelt would remain active in public life, his brief but eloquent remarks were telling.

Teddy Roosevelt's 1899 Rough Riders Reunion

The address at Battery Park only served to set off the real celebration. A five-mile parade up Broadway to 59th and Fifth followed, with an estimated 1 million spectators lining the streets. "The sidewalks on both sides of Broadway were jammed with people, from curb to building fronts," the Chicago Tribune noted. "There were people in all the windows, people on the housetops, and people banked up in the side streets." As Roosevelt took his place in the open carriage leading the procession, an additional surprise lay in store for him: 150 members of his Rough Rider unit, whom he had led so brilliantly in the Spanish-American War, appeared on horseback to serve as his escort of honor. Beyond the Rough Riders, there were 2,000 additional veterans from that same war who had come to participate in the celebration. The demonstration was "incomparably the largest affair of its kind on record," the Washington, D.C., Evening Star claimed, "characteristic of the man himself, the man of superlatives, and of intense moods."
Placards with friendly inscriptions, familiar cartoons, and exhortations for Roosevelt to once again run for the presidency in 1912 hung in shop windows all along the way. At 310 Broadway, an immense Teddy bear stared down an enormous stuffed African lion. At Scribner's, a ten-foot-high portrait of the Colonel in full hunting gear graced the front of the building. Peddlers were everywhere. "You could not move a step," one reporter observed, "without having shoved in your face a remarkable assortment of Teddy souvenirs. There were jungle hats with ribbons bearing the word Delighted, there were Roosevelt medals, Teddy's teeth in celluloid, miniature Teddy bears, gorgeous flags on canes, with a picture of the Rough Rider, buttons, pins and many other reminders of the Colonel's career." Even along Wall Street, where it was jokingly predicted black crepe would signal Roosevelt's return (given his storied fights with "the malefactors of great wealth"), flags waved and colored streamers were tossed from upper windows.
"Teddy! Teddy! Bully for you, Teddy," the crowd yelled, and he responded with "unconcealed delight" to the gleeful chants. "One could see that he enjoyed every moment of the triumphal progress," the New York Times reported, and "those who cheered cheered the louder when they saw how their cheers delighted him." Near the end of the route, a reporter shouted: "Are you tired?" His answer was clear and firm despite the long day, the hot sun, and the perspiration dripping down his face. "Not a bit."
Around 1 p.m., when the parade finally concluded at the 59th Street Plaza, Roosevelt, with tears in his eyes, flashed his dazzling smile and headed toward a private residence for a family lunch. No sooner had the Colonel reached his destination than a frightening storm began. Lightning, thunder, and ferocious winds accompanied a heavy downpour. Uprooted trees littered the ground with fallen limbs. In all, seventeen lives were lost. It seemed the sky had stayed peaceful and blue only for the sun-splashed hours of the celebration for Roosevelt.
"Everyone began talking about Roosevelt luck," Captain Butt observed. While the pelting rain continued, Roosevelt relaxed in the Fifth Avenue home belonging to the grandfather of his son's fiancee and enjoyed a festive meal of chicken in cream sauce with rice while catching up on the news of the day. In the late afternoon, he boarded a special train for his hometown of Oyster Bay, Long Island. Once again, the Roosevelt luck came into play. The severe rainstorm miraculously ceased just as his train pulled in. He was met by "the whole town," complete with a 500-member children's choir, a display of devotion that nearly "swept the former President from his feet as he stepped to the ground." Walking beneath "triumphal arches" constructed by his neighbors, Roosevelt reached a nearby ballpark where grandstands had been raised to seat 3,000 people. There, he spoke movingly of what it meant to be home once more, "to live among you again as I have for the last 40 years." Reporters who had followed Roosevelt since he began shaking hands on the Kaiserin that morning marveled at the energy with which he continued to grasp the hands of his neighbors, finding something personal to say to one and all, without revealing "the slightest trace of fatigue in voice or manner."
In their lengthy coverage of the historic day, the press corps brought to light scores of colorful anecdotes. The story they failed to get, however, was the story they wanted above all -- Roosevelt's response to the major political issue of the day: the growing disenchantment of progressive Republicans with the leadership of President Taft.
As his second term neared its end, Roosevelt had handpicked from his cabinet the trusted friend he desired to succeed him: William Howard Taft. The two men had first met in their early thirties, when Roosevelt headed the Civil Service Commission and Taft was U.S. Solicitor General. "We lived in the same part of Washington," Taft recalled, "our wives knew each other well, and some of our children were born about the same time." Over the years, this friendship had deepened, becoming what Taft described as "one of close and sweet intimacy." During his first presidential term, Roosevelt had invited Taft, then governor general of the newly acquired Philippine Islands, to serve as his secretary of war. Initially reluctant to leave a post to which his talents were ideally suited, Taft had finally been persuaded to join his old friend's administration as "the foremost member" of his cabinet, his daily "counsellor and adviser in all the great questions" that might confront them.
Roosevelt had thrown all his inexhaustible energy behind the drive to make Taft president. "I am quite as nervous about your campaign as I should be if it were my own," he had told Taft. He had edited Taft's speeches, relayed a constant stream of advice, and corralled his own immense bloc of supporters behind Taft's candidacy. When Taft was elected, Roosevelt reveled in the victory, both delighted for a "beloved" friend and confident that America had chosen the man best suited to execute the progressive goals Roosevelt had championed -- to distribute the nation's wealth more equitably, regulate the giant corporations and railroads, strengthen the rights of labor, and protect the country's natural resources from private exploitation.
At the start of Roosevelt's presidency in 1901, big business had been in the driver's seat. While the country prospered as never before, squalid conditions were rampant in immigrant slums, workers in factories and mines labored without safety regulations, and farmers fought with railroads over freight rates. Voices had been raised to protest the concentration of corporate wealth and the gap between rich and poor, yet the doctrine of laissez-faire precluded collective action to ameliorate social conditions. Under Roosevelt's Square Deal, the country had awakened to the need for government action to allay problems caused by industrialization -- an awakening spurred in part by the dramatic exposes of a talented group of investigative journalists he famously labeled "muckrakers."
By the end of Roosevelt's tenure, much had been accomplished. The moribund 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act had been revived, vast acres of lands had been protected from exploitation, and railroads had been prevented from continuing long-standing abuses. Congress had passed workmen's compensation, a pure food and drug law, and a meat inspection act. Nevertheless, much remained to be done. Roosevelt's legacy would depend upon the actions of his chosen successor -- William Howard Taft. "Taft is as fine a fellow as ever sat in the President's chair," Roosevelt told a friend shortly after the election, "and I cannot express the measureless content that comes over me as I think that the work in which I have so much believed will be carried on by him."
While he was abroad, however, Roosevelt had received numerous disturbing communications from his progressive friends. Word that his closest ally in the conservation movement, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, had been removed by Taft, left Roosevelt dumbfounded: "I do not know any man in public life who has rendered quite the service you have rendered," he wrote to Pinchot, "and it seems to be absolutely impossible that there can be any truth in this statement." When the news was confirmed, he asked Pinchot to meet him in Europe in order to hear his firsthand account. Pinchot had arrived with a number of letters from fellow progressives, all expressing a belief that Taft had aligned himself with old-line conservatives on Capitol Hill and was gradually compromising Roosevelt's hard-won advances.
Roosevelt found it difficult to believe he had so misjudged the character and convictions of his old friend. On his final day in Europe, he confided his puzzlement to Sir Edward Grey as the two outdoorsmen tramped through the New Forest in southern England in pursuit of the song or sight of several English birds Roosevelt had only read about. "Roosevelt's spirit was much troubled by what was happening in his own country since he left office," Grey recalled. "He spoke of Taft and of their work together with very live affection; he had wished Taft to succeed him, had supported him, made way for him. How could he now break with Taft and attack him?" Yet the concerted voice of his progressive friends was urging him to do precisely that.
All through the spring of 1910, as the date of his return approached, one question had dominated political discourse and speculation: "What will Mr. Roosevelt do?" Which side would he take in the intensifying struggle that was dividing the Republican Party between the old-line conservatives and a steadily growing number of "insurgents," as the progressive faction was then known. Aware that anything he said would be construed as hurtful or helpful to one side or the other, Roosevelt determined to remain silent on all political matters until he could more fully absorb and analyze the situation. "There is one thing I want, and that is absolute privacy," he told reporters as the day's celebration came to an end. "I want to close up like a native oyster . . . I am glad to have you all here; but . . . I have nothing to say."

Vancouver Sun

These two form the only romantic pairing on my list! But I include them because they do make a Sensational Team as well as being a sensational couple. Detective work aside, romance aside, Harriet and Peter "work well together", each bringing a separate set of talents to the puzzles they're trying to solve. Their teamwork is metaphorically crystallised in the middle of Gaudy Night when, in a fit of nostalgia for her student days, Harriet writes half a poem about Oxford which Peter finishes. Though their individual poetic style and tone are completely different, together they build a perfect and true sonnet with both literal and figurative levels of meaning. Oh, and they are also both excellent at steering a punt. Not every couple can make teamwork of this difficult skill.

That's part of bestselling author Elizabeth Wein's answer to a question from The Guardian on her choices for her favorite partners in literature. Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey appear in the perennially popular Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers. (Click here for a spiffy edition of The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories.)
You will see in the column to the right of this post that my piece on Wein's Code Name Verity is the most popular of the ~1000 I have written! (Doubtless that's because of the buzz an upcoming film based on the book is generating.)
While waiting for the movie, I'm going to read her interconnected book Rose Under Fire, also set in World War II, and also filled with a gratifying quorum of female heroines.
According to Publishers Weekly, "Wein wanted to know more about Ravensbrück, the notorious women’s concentration camp, after reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. She hit upon her main character Rose’s motivation for writing down everything she could remember about having been imprisoned after reading And I Am Afraid of My Dreams by Wanda Póltawska, a Polish survivor of the camps. Her fascination with women who were dropped behind enemy lines was stoked by The Women Who Lived for Danger, a collective biography about some of World War II’s female secret agents. Many did not live to tell their own stories."
I reckon that for Wein, the yen to compose came early! Here she is with her first typewriter as a small child. Wein has lived in Scotland for more than ten years and has written nearly all of her novels there.
Has anyone read Rose Under Fire yet?

This lovely woman was probably Franklin Delano Roosevelt's true sweetheart. Viewers of Ken Burns' series The Roosevelts will have learned that F.D.R. had a lifelong attachment to Lucy Mercer (later Rutherfurd). His wife Eleanor discovered their affair during World War I and was devastated (she found a cache of letters while unpacking his suitcase after a trip). He promised never to see Lucy again, but the affair eventually resumed. Even his own daughter conspired to bring Lucy into the White House during World War II while Eleanor was away—probably feeling it was beneficial for her father's health, given the immense pressures he was under. The unkindest cut of all for Eleanor was that Lucy was present at Warm Springs, Georgia, on the day that F.D.R. died.
In his book Franklin & Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life, Joseph E. Persico used previously unpublished letters and other documents to reveal for the first time that this romance continued unbroken for nearly 30 years. He also causes us to speculate how the course of history would have changed had Franklin accepted Eleanor's offer of a divorce (nixed by his domineering mother) and married his soul mate, thus obviating his political career.
In the following excerpt, set in 1918, F.D.R. has just returned, ill, from an overseas trip while serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, and Eleanor has found the letters from Lucy.

Newlyweds Eleanor and Franklin at Hyde Park, 1906

➤Thirteen years before, Eleanor had sobbed to her cousin Ethel that she would never be able to hold Franklin; "He's too attractive." Now, like the dreaded knock on the condemned prisoner's cell, the moment seemed at hand. How hollow had been her husband's promises, his protestations of missing her while packing her off to Campobello, his lies about needing to stay behind because of his work. Franklin had openly deceived her with an employee she had entrusted with her most private affairs.
What was collapsing in her external life could not compare with the disintegration within. She had always believed herself more unattractive than she was, a conviction confirmed early by her mother's cutting comments. Her father had promised her happiness, then snatched it away by his dissipation and death. Only lately had [her] confidence returned with her recognized contributions to the war effort. Now, in an instant, a packet of letters had swept [it] away. Because of her lack of interest in sex, she had not grasped what an overpowering force it was. Now, faced with incontrovertible evidence that her husband had found satisfaction elsewhere, sexual failure was added to her inadequacies.
The precise content of Lucy's letters can never be known because, as Eleanor confided years later to a curator at the Roosevelt Library, she had destroyed them. But, however genteelly Lucy might have expressed herself, her words left no doubt as to the seriousness of the affair. As Eleanor digested their awful import, she accepted what she must do. She approached Franklin as soon as he began to mend with the proof in hand of his infidelity.
Lucy was like no other woman, and Franklin was like no other man. What they had done and what they felt for each other could not be compared to the lechery of a Livy Davis [a womanizing friend]. Franklin suffered qualms of conscience, understood the risks to his marriage and career, but in the company of Lucy, they vanished. In the confrontation with Eleanor, Franklin admitted his feelings for Lucy. In likely the most reckless move of his heretofore cautiously constructed life, he said he wanted to marry her. Eleanor later confided in her daughter, Anna. "She told me that she questioned him, offered him a divorce, and asked that he think things over carefully before giving her a definite answer." Most important, she urged him to consider the children.
Eventually, they would have to face his mother with the truth. In a tense encounter in Sara's living room, Eleanor, resignedly, spoke of her willingness to give Franklin his freedom. Sara was aghast. The idea that her son wanted to divorce Eleanor was the greatest shock she had suffered since 13 years before when he had told her he intended to marry her. It is "all very well for you, Eleanor, to speak of being willing to give Franklin his freedom," she said. But imagine the wagging tongues and shaking heads at Oyster Bay. Adultery could be concealed, even tolerated, but divorce was a calamity. After Cousin Alice Longworth's failed attempt to divorce the chronically faithless Nick Longworth, she noted, "I don't think one can have any idea how horrendous even the idea of divorce was in those days. I remember telling my family in 1912 I wanted one and, although they didn't quite lock me up, they exercised considerable pressure to get me to reconsider." Indeed, no one in either branch of the Roosevelt family had ever been divorced.

Eleanor & Sara Delano, 1908

If Franklin seriously meant to leave his wife, she could not stand in his way. Then the dowager empress of Hyde Park delivered her terms: If Franklin persisted, she would cut him off without a cent. He now confronted his choices, freedom at a high price or living in the comfortable prison of convention. He enjoyed lavish living and unthinkingly assumed it as his due. The annual income from Eleanor's trust, $8,000, and his own $5,000 could support a livable upper-middle-class life. But not the life the Roosevelts led. Who would pay for the upkeep on their homes, the servants' salaries, the club memberships, the children's tuition at the best private schools? Just the previous March when two of his children were ill, Franklin had written his mother, "You have saved my life or rather, the various doctors' lives, by making it possible for me to pay them promptly!" In the same letter he reminded Sara that a tax bill was due on his boat.
Was Sara serious about cutting off the son whom she adored above all else? He had to accept that he was kept by his mother on a golden leash.

The couple with F.D.R.'s mother, Sara Delano

During the crisis, Franklin finally consulted Louis Howe [a political adviser] about what he should do. For Howe, that Franklin was seriously considering leaving Eleanor was as if a heavy bettor had seen his horse stumble midway in a high-stakes race. What of those White House dreams? Howe was desperate to get his horse back on track. The grounds for divorce in New York State were adultery, and the details of the affair, if revealed, would spell Roosevelt's political death.

"It is unlikely that Franklin told Lucy the principal demand Eleanor had extracted from him: that Lucy was to be effaced from his life. Eleanor had imposed on him a second condition: He was never again to share her bed."

➤And if politics was out, what else would Franklin do? He was no businessman, no great shakes at the law. If he wanted to rise in politics, Howe warned, it would have to be with Eleanor at his side. If divorced, would he even be able to continue in his present job? Both he and Louis well understood Josephus Daniels's [secretary of the Navy] puritanical streak. How would a man who had rescinded the issuance of condoms for sailors on shore leave, who believed that virginity was the proper lot of healthy young men, react toward a subordinate enmeshed in an illicit affair?
Franklin now accepted what he had to do. But first, with his two-track mind well in command, he immersed himself in department business. He prepared for Daniels an analysis and recommendations based on what he had found in Europe. The ever impressed Daniels sent Franklin's paper to President Woodrow Wilson with a note praising the "clear, concise, and illuminating report [by] the clear-headed and able FDR."
Finally, Franklin knew that he must face Lucy. Where did they meet? That they did meet after Eleanor's discovery of the affair is known because many years later, Franklin's daughter, Anna, who had come to know a middle-aged Lucy, told an interviewer, "L. M. hinted to me there were a couple of such meetings to wind up loose ends." When they met, whatever their private anguish, the ego-driven Franklin could not resist sharing with Lucy the contents of his European diary. He showed her passages describing the high personages he had dealt with, the dangers he had endured, a rousing speech he had made while sheltered in the woods near Amiens.
Before his departure to Europe, they had spoken of marriage. It could not be, he told her; Eleanor would not grant him a divorce. His deception was double-edged. He had first deceived Eleanor. Now he was deceiving Lucy with the claim that Eleanor stood in their way. Years later, Anna gave an interview to Joseph Lash, Eleanor's biographer, who asked her if "FDR may have used the story of er's refusal to give him a divorce as a way of putting off Lucy." Anna agreed. As for Eleanor, though her heart had been broken and her self-esteem battered, Franklin's decision to stick with her came as a relief since, as Anna put it, "She loved the guy deeply."
It is unlikely that Franklin told Lucy the principal demand Eleanor had extracted from him: that Lucy was to be effaced from his life. Eleanor had imposed on him a second condition: He was never again to share her bed.
A shattered Lucy fled to the home of her cousins. One, Elizabeth Henderson Cotten, recalled of that time, "I know that a marriage would have taken place, but as Lucy said to us, 'Eleanor was not willing to step aside.'" Lucy was not a "shrinking violet," Elizabeth further noted. "But she realized it was hopeless...[though] I am sure neither one of them ever loved anyone else." How much of Eleanor's understandable opprobrium did Lucy deserve? She was a warmhearted, decent human being whose only sin had been to fall hopelessly in love.
The idea has been put forth that Lucy would never have married Franklin because she was a devout descendant of Maryland's Roman Catholic founders. But her father's family was Episcopal. Her mother, Minnie, had been divorced. She and her husband had been wed in London in a Church of England ceremony, which, according to Catholic doctrine, meant she was not married at all. As Cousin Elizabeth put it, Minnie's Catholicism was a late-blooming affair that she had come by for sentimental, not theological, reasons.
The discovery of the affair and Franklin's reaction offer a glimpse into the soul of this opaque man. His ambition ran deep. His passion for politics and public service ran deep; but his commitment to love, while real, was evidently less deep. In October, while in the throes of the divorce crisis, he still took time to pursue his dream of martial glory. He wrote his secretary, Charles McCarthy, "You are quite right in guessing that I am probably going to get into the fighting end of the game, but, if I do so I suppose it will be the Navy and not the Army." When he returned to Washington, he rode the crest of his admired report on Europe to gain another meeting with President Wilson to press again his case for getting into uniform. Earlier that day, a story broke in the papers, doubtlessly planted by Louis Howe, that the assistant secretary of the Navy intended to enlist as an ordinary seaman. Franklin managed to see the president on October 13. Peace was in the air, Wilson informed him. The war could end within weeks, which it did. The slaughter was over, yet Roosevelt viewed the cheering crowds, impromptu parades, and honking horns with mixed feelings.
William Sheffield Cowles Jr. [a relative] recalled Franklin telling him that "he had made a mistake taking the job of assistant secretary. If he had gone into the Navy at the beginning of the war, with his knowledge of the sea and sailing, he would have been an executive officer on a destroyer.""I would have loved that," Franklin told Cowles.
Just before the armistice, FDR's scheme for 100,000 mines to block a major sea lane had finally been implemented, but too late to affect the war's outcome. Not, however, in Franklin's recounting. "It may not be too far-fetched...to say," he later would claim, "that the North Sea mine barrage...had something to do with the German Naval mutiny and the ending of the World War." No matter how he inflated his experiences, the truth remained: He had been a civilian in wartime, and the valor and political advantage of battlefield heroics had passed him by.
At some point, Eleanor destroyed the letters Franklin had sent her during their courtship. His tender affirmations of eternal and abiding love seemed to her a mockery. During their courtship, their different characters had seemed healthily complementary, his confidence, magnetism, and extroversion coupled with her shyness, loyalty, and high principles. After his faithlessness had been revealed, the equation began to shift. His confidence began to appear to her as egotism, his extroversion as shallowness, his magnetism as a gift squandered on self-indulgence. James Roosevelt, writing many years later, marked the end of the affair as the beginning between his parents of "an armed truce that endured until the day he died."
In the end, the three parties in the triangle behaved according to character, Eleanor self-sacrificing, Franklin self-preserving, Lucy lovelorn but resilient, as subsequent events would prove. Nineteen years later, when Eleanor recounted the year 1918 in her first autobiography, she wrote at length of Franklin's mission to Europe, of 18-hour shifts at the canteen, of her desperately ill husband being carried into his mother's house, even of Anna winning a German shepherd puppy in a lottery. But of the near destruction of her marriage, not a word.
It is a tantalizing question: If Sara had not threatened to cut off her son, if Franklin had divorced Eleanor and remarried, and if indeed FDR's political career had ended, how differently might the history of the 20th century have read?

From Franklin & Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life by Joseph E. Persico. Copyright © 2008 by Joseph E. Persico. Published by Random House Inc.

The eminent music critic Will Friedwald just weighed in on two exciting new CDs we chose to carry before even hearing them: Magic by Sergio Mendes and In the Mood by Herb Alpert. Both albums involve colorful collaborations with musicians from various genres and generations. Below are excerpts from his Wall Street Journal review.

"There's no fancy chart here [on "When Sunny Gets Blue"], just Mr. Alpert playing Marvin Fisher's melody with much obvious love, delineating it deliberately and meaningfully. It's the most exposed and vulnerable Mr. Alpert has ever sounded on record."—Will Friedwald. You can hear "Chattanooga Choo Cho" and "Don't Cry" from Alpert's In the Mood on this edition of NPR's World Cafe. Photo by Chris Adjani.

Apart from the way their careers and personal lives have been linked—Lani Hall, most famously a singer in Mr. Mendes's ensemble, who has been Mrs. Alpert since 1973—the two have a lot in common: They're both among the final artists who achieved blockbuster hits as interpreters of songs composed by others (prior to the takeover by singer-songwriters at the start of the 1970s). And, perhaps not coincidentally, they're also among the few hitmakers of the rock 'n' roll era whose appeal wasn't specific to any one generation. During The Great Society years, kids were buying the Rolling Stones and The Supremes, while their parents bought Dean Martin and Perry Como. But everybody bought Sergio Mendes's Brasil '66 and Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass.
Now Mr. Alpert's "In the Mood" (Shout! Factory) and Mr. Mendes's "Magic" (Sony) show the two auteurs at their best and, on different tracks, at their most populist—which is not always the same thing. "In the Mood" doesn't include the famous swing-era song that inspired the album's title, but it does begin with another landmark hit for the Glenn Miller Orchestra, "Chattanooga Choo Choo." The first sounds we hear on the album are electronically generated beats, which may cause you to assume for a minute that Mr. Alpert has changed the name of his ensemble to the Tijuana Techno. But the famous Harry Warren melody quickly arrives in the form of Mr. Alpert's signature brass sound....

"John Legend's guest shot on 'Don't Say Goodbye' shows how perfect the Mendes sound is for backing up a wide range of celebrity singers."—Will Friedwald

Mr. Mendes's "Magic" proves that his music has been, since his first album in the early '60s, a kind of musical feijoada, a Brazilian stew, in which the basic ingredient, the soup stock as it were, is Mr. Mendes's familiar samba beat…..Baritone Seu Jorge evokes both romance and a party atmosphere, whether singing or speaking, on "Sou Eu," a South American standard by composer Moacir Santos, whom Wynton Marsalis has dubbed "The Duke Ellington of Brazil." The beats on Milton Nascimento's "Olha a Rua" (with a vocal by the composer) and "One Nation," co-written by Mr. Mendes and guest vocalist Carlinhos Brown, both split the difference between dancing and parading down the street during Carnival. Deep-voiced Ana Carolina delivers the most sensual vocal of the set on "Atlantica"; Mika Mutti follows her with beautifully vocalized harmonica lines that turn the number into a virtual love duet, and then, when Mr. Mendes begins singing with the two of them, it becomes a ménage à trois. "Meu Rio," with a vocal by Maria Gadu, adds strings to the mix in the form of a solo cello and percussion in the form of handclaps, which suggests flamenco.

In this excerpt from NPR's All Things Considered, Mendes talks about his first "big break." Below, the John Legend track from Magic.

"The conversation, like many others I had with people on trains, derived an easy candour from the shared journey, the comfort of the dining car, and the certain knowledge that neither of us would see each other again."—Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

“The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.”―Theroux, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

I gobbled The Tao of Travel down like a box of bon bons, hoping to share some of its best bits with you. Guess what―it quickly sold out. Argh. But I can still pass on some of my favorites, and point you to other tomes by this inveterate traveler and inimitable chronicler. The Lower River  is a novel on Africa (one of his favorite destinations); The Last Train to Zona Verde is a travel book on a 2500-mile solo trip he took through the western part of the continent, and a A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta is an atmospheric mystery set in India.

Illustration from The Tao of Travel

Despite the fact that Theroux told The Atlantic, in an interview on The Tao of Travel, that "blogs look to me illiterate, they look hasty, like someone babbling," here are some choice gleanings from his compendium.
British author Fanny Trollope renamed Cincinnati "Porkopolis" because of the pigs in the street. She characterized her travel book, The Domestic Manners of Americans as "six hundred pages of griffonage [scribblings]." She might have dubbed it "A Nation of Spitters" for the rampant and repulsive habit to which she frequently alludes. In any event, the book was admired by America's own Mark Twain, himself no mean globe trotter.
American Henry James, who lived in Europe, apparently traveled from spa to spa to obtain relief from what Theroux describes as “an almost constant state of constipation.” (His prolix prose certainly wasn't!)
Who is this fella? "He rambled on the Continent, criss-crossed the United States, sailed across the Pacific, and ended up in Samoa, where he is buried." Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson
Among what I would call the pseudo travelers are D. H. Lawrence, who spent a mere week in Sardinia, but used 355 pages to tell about it in his book, Sea and Sardinia. Graham Greene's 18 days in Liberia produced Journey Without Maps. Rudyard Kipling (left) never even went to Mandalay, the subject of his famous poem, although he did spend a few hours in Rangoon.
In his excellent chapter on walking, Theroux points out that the Chinese characters for pilgrimage mean "paying one's respect to the mountain.... Many Taoists make a point of visiting the five holy mountains they regard as pillars of China, the cardinal compass points as well as the center, separating heaven and earth."
Among the intrepid traveler/adventurers Theroux cites are Ffyona Campbell (left), who walked the length of Great Britain at age 16 (she later perambulated across the U.S., Africa, and Australia); Göran Kropp, a Swede who biked to and from Sweden to Nepal, climbing Mt. Everest in between; Aimé Tschiffely, a Swiss who rode on horseback from Buenos Aires to New York; and Gerard d'Aboville, who traversed the Pacific Ocean, from Japan to Oregon, in a rowboat (he had previously crossed the Atlantic, from Cape Cod to Brittany). Questioned about his motivation, d'Aboville replied: "Only an animal does useful things. An animal gets food, finds a place to sleep, tries to keep comfortable. But I wanted to do something that was not useful—not like an animal at all. Something only a human being would do."
I'll close with a quote from one of the greatest travel writers of all time: Freya Stark (above and below, 1893–1993), to whom Theroux devotes an entire chapter:

"One can only  really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism."—Riding to the Tigris

Click here for our latest offerings in travel writing, including Travel & Adventure: Short Stories by Great Writers, The Best American Travel Writing, Photographic Travel, and The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places: First-Hand Accounts of Exploration by David Livingstone, James Cook, Meriwether Lewis, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, Sir Edmund Hilary, and Many Others.

Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Roosevelts showed us how F.D.R. used the power of the Executive Branch to alleviate the effect on the country of the stock market crash, the Dust Bowl, and other disasters attendant on the Great Depression. Among his many enduring New Deal initiatives were the Civilian Conservation Corps, the improvements to the national parks and the nation's roadways, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The latter encompassed public works and sidewalks and government buildings as well as theater, literature, and the arts. Posters promoting various WPA projects gave work to many graphic artists and are a colorful, tangible part of its legacy. Appearing throughout this post are a handful from the hundreds preserved in the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division. Topics range from syphilis prevention to national parks and zoos to doll buggy contests and national defense (cf. the hideously racist poster below right).
“The way to whistle for a horse is to purse your lips together loosely, blow moderately hard and sing "Whee-oo! Whee-oo! Whee-oo!" in a high-pitched voice. Try it. You can do it.” So instructs Mildred Armstrong Kalish, author of the frank and fascinating Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.  [I did it; I sounded like a bee.] "Use everything; waste nothing" was the unspoken motto of Kalish and her family, who lived through the Depression by means of animal husbandry, farming, brilliant domestic economies, and division of labor amongst grownups and children alike.
“Without knowing it, the adults in our lives practiced a most productive kind of behavior modification. After our chores and household duties were done we were give 'permission' to read. In other words, our elders positioned reading as a privilege—a much sought-after prize, granted only to those goodhardworkers who earned it. How clever of them.” Below is an excerpt from Kalish's first chapter; you can read it in its entirety here.

My childhood came to a virtual halt when I was around five years old. That was when my grandfather banished my father from our lives forever for some transgression that was not to be disclosed to us children, though we overheard whispered references to bankruptcy, bootlegging, and jail time. His name was never again spoken in our presence; he just abruptly disappeared from our lives. The shame and disgrace that enveloped our family as a result of these events, along with the ensuing divorce, just about destroyed my mother. Is it possible today to make anyone understand the harsh judgment of such failures in the late 1920's? Throughout my entire life, whenever I was asked about my father, I always said that he was dead. When he actually died I never knew.
So it was that Grandma and Grandpa chose to make our family of five-Mama, my ten-year-old brother Jack, my eight-year-old brother John, my one-year-old sister Avis, and me-their responsibility. They decided to settle us on the smallest of Grandpa's four farms, which was located about three miles from the village of Garrison, where they had retired after a lifetime of farming. However, because the fierce blizzards and subzero temperatures of Iowa winters made it hazardous to walk to the one-room rural school we would be attending, it had been arranged that we would live with Grandma and Grandpa in Garrison and attend school there from January until the school year ended in mid-May. At that time our family would move out to the farm. Each year from then on, we went to school in the country from September until Christmas, then moved back to Garrison and finished the school year in town.

Some of the artists who made posters are identified by name; above are beautiful works by Louis Siegriest and Shari Weisberg. Below, pieces by Ben Nason and Gregg Arlington.
Below, posters by Erik Krause and John Buczak and two more anonymous ones.
 The African-American theater posters are especially noteworthy; and who can resist the fabulous zoo images??
The WPA didn't forget the small fry; this is one of several doll & buggy parade posters in the Library of Congress collection! Which poster(s) would you like to frame and hang?
Below, another beauty, by Frank Nicholson. Sign me up!

Further reading: Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein. 

Instead of booking expensive trips to view the world's wonders, cash-strapped, armchair art lovers can now behold them with a few clicks of a keyboard.
It's all part of the Google Cultural Institute, the current offerings of which range from Hamburg's Archaeological Museum and the Rubens House in Antwerp to the National Cowboy Museum in the U.S. (There are at present more than 500 partners from over 60 countries, with more than 6.2 million objects and artifacts already online.)
In 1964, Marc Chagall completed a fantastical painting, in Paris's Palais Garnier (a.k.a. the Paris Opera), depicting scenes from works by Mozart, Mussorgsky, Beethoven, Verdi, Debussy, Wagner, Berlioz, and more. Problem was, the lofty opus was difficult to inspect, as it was almost 60 feet above the floor.

The Paris Opera, with Chagall's opus on the ceiling (Corbis)

Now, thanks to the internet, anyone can view this colorful masterpiece in minute detail. Chagall's great work has been digitized, allowing viewers to zoom in and out, looking at each scene up close and personal. I've selected a few of my favorites to share with you, above and below.

The central panel evokes four composers and works. On this half are Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice (Eurydice plays the lyre [Orpheus’s instrument] and an angel offers flowers) and Bizet's Carmen.  Only Chagall would have a bull playing the guitar!

This evocation of Pelleas et Melisande by Debussy is bounded by one of the splendid gilt details that encircle the composition.

Above, Tristan and Isolde, and a woman playing a stringed instrument. So lovely! Below, a bit of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

Chagall's conception of Mozart's Magic Flute. A giant angel fills the sky while a bird plays the flute. Chagall designed the sets and costumes for the 1967 Metropolitan Opera production of the opera.

 Below are several more examples of the opulent decoration in the building, beginning with a panel by Paul Baudry depicting Salome dancing before Herod. Baudry also did a series of Muses.
The digitized artworks also extend to the outside of the building. At the tippy-top is the bronze statue "Apollon, la Poésie et la Musique" (1860-1869), by Aimé Millet, while the front is graced by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's sculpture "La danse."
Bon voyage!

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"— Henry Ward Beecher

"A house without books is like a room without windows."— Horace Mann

Did you know that the average American household watches 42 hours of television per week? And that 40 percent of Americans reject evolution? (I guess they're not watching Cosmos). The vibrant illustration above is from a 1960s biology textbook. Those were the days!
Taking a stand for the enduring value of books and reading, today's Glean is devoted to 10 links I've collected that celebrate same, illustrated with sundry book-related images. Enjoy!
1.  Here's The Guardian on readers of fiction within fiction, including Roald Dahl's Matilda (left) and Mad Men's Joan Holloway (she reads Lady Chatterly's Lover, while Don Draper reads Portnoy's Complaint).
2.  Columnist Frank Bruni of the Dallas Morning News cites a report by Common Sense Media that 22% of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say they hardly ever or never read for pleasure (up from 8 and 9% 30 years ago). He goes on to cite several more research studies on the correlation between brainpower and being bookish, summarized flatly by The Guardian's Dan Hurley as “reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic.”

Alexander Benois De Stetto, Still Life with Books (1929)

3.  Independent bookstore Aaron's Books divulges 10 Ways Reading Improves Everything—which includes one of my favorites, listening to audiobooks while traveling, doing chores, or walking for exercise.
4.  Here comes flavorwire with no fewer than 50 essential mystery novels that everyone should read. Wowsa! They kick things off with Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and continue with classics by Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith, Jo Nesbo, Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiel Hammett, et al. Did they omit any of your favorites? We usually have a quorum of the above on our website (Sherlock Holmes illustration by Rochelle Donald.)
5.  Here's a roundup by the CBC on five literary hoaxes, including some quite quirky poseurs (e.g., septuagenarian, white male Yale grad pens memoir of Mexican-American street kid).
6.  I kind of assume that if you're perusing this blog you have an awesome vocabulary and are somewhat of a bibliophile. So let's see how you stack up against the Huffington Post's "15 Words You Didn't Know Were Coined By Famous Writers." I think this might be the most delightful item on my entire compendium! I look forward to your favorites in the comments.
7.  Of ShortList's tally of classic works of literature being adapted for film, I'm most intrigued by Madame Bovary with Mia Wasikowska, Macbeth with Marion Cotillard as Lady M, Salomé with Jessica Chastain, and The Jungle Book (animated, with voices by Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, and Ben Kingsley).
8.  This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education talks about a digital, crowd-sourced project called Book Traces, which preserves interesting marginalia and inserts that 19th-century readers left in books.
9.  “I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper what one would say to the same person by word of mouth,” Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra on 3 January 1801, adding, “I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter.” According to Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade at the Oxford University Press blog, Austen is believed to have written some 3,000 letters, only about 160 of which have survived, most of them addressed to Cassandra." I reckon her sister was Austen's ideal reader, and that the missives to her significantly helped the budding writer hone both her prose and her innate gift for satire.
10. In this Guardian list, author Gill Lewis picks special children's books featuring birds, including Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and John Schoenherr; Silent Spring by Rachel Carson; and The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico. (Molly Monday, these owls are for you!)

As George Harrison's song goes, "all things must pass."  Today I must bid goodbye to all of my lovely followers, as this is the last edition of The Daily Glean.
I wish a thousand benisons in particular to Gioconda, RPS, Molly Monday, Tastes Like a Penny, Baron von Muggenhausen, and all the other comments writers who have made creating the last 982 posts such a blessing and a joy. Special thanks to Karen Mulder and Linda Thornburg, who contributed such fun and wildly popular guest blogs.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~Henry David Thoreau

I will continue writing the DVD and music descriptions that appear on the Daedalus Books & Music website and in the print catalogs. I encourage you to look at the spiffy new "Spotlight" feature —ever-changing thematic roundups of books, films, and music—that appears at the top of the Daedalus home page. I hope to instigate a personal blog called artsjunkie in the future, so look around for that if you get a chance.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. ~Ivy Baker Priest

I'll leave you with a song written by my childhood idol, Dale Evans (I had all the regalia!) And a few vintage images in anticipation of an enjoyably spooky Halloween. What will you be doing? I'll be attending the annual "Howl-o-ween"  parade with my neighbor's two-year-old, featuring myriad  canines in costumes. 

Hello! My name is Amy (aka Daedalus Amy) and I'll be posting on behalf of The Daily Glean.

For all you Tudor fans have we got something for you!

Is it the drama—the royal rivalries, the plots and battles, the boundless ambition—that makes us thrill to tales of Tudor England? Is it the players—kingly Henry VIII, ruthless Thomas Cromwell, doomed Anne Boleyn, triumphant Elizabeth? Or is it the history itself, vividly played out in the works of Shakespeare, and more recently in books from historical writers like Hilary Mantel, Antonia Fraser, and Philippa Gregory?

Whatever the reasons, we can't get enough of the Tudors—particularly the new BBC–PBS Masterpiece series Wolf Hall—and here we celebrate this magnificent era in gripping historical narratives and novelizations as well as gorgeously costumed performances on DVD. Visit our forum here.

Dying for a good mystery? Daedalus has got you covered! Purchase four mysteries from our special selection and get a 5th mystery for FREE! Don't miss out on this great offer. Visit our special page here and stock up for the summer!

Here are just a few of the titles available:

Summer will be here any second, and with it long languid days and relaxing vacation weeks. Summer is also the perfect time for a little mental relaxation and entertainment, which is why we've put together an engaging collection of activity books, hobby handbooks, puzzle treasuries, and brain-tickling books about tricky words, fascinating history, and intriguing science—our own (and considerably more fun) version of "summer school."

You can discover the surprising charms of coloring with our grown-up coloring books, take up a new hobby like painting or sketching with step-by-step instruction books, delve into devilish crosswords and IQ tests, sharpen up your vocabulary, travel back in time and around the world, or explore the universe from your beach chair.

You can view our entire list of summer school suggestions here. Also, be sure to visit our website (www.salebooks.com) all summer as we'll be featuring lots of cool books to add to your shelves.

Here are a few of our personal picks to kick off your summer school fun!

The Coloring Book of Mindfulness: 50 Quotes and Designs to Help You Focus, Slow Down, De-Stress

List Price: $14.95
Sale Price: $10.95

This lovely book includes line illustrations inspired by the natural world yet designed to be creatively colored in. Amid flowers and trees you'll find parrots and peacocks, dragonflies and dormice, presented in two-page spreads ... Read more about this beautiful coloring book for adults here.



Brain Training Puzzles: Intermediate Book 2: Five-A-Day for Your Brain

List Price: $9.99
Sale Price: $2.98

Chess boards, color tiles, weights on balance beams, silhouettes to match, Sudoku and other number grids, battleships, and other challenging, often visually intensive puzzles are presented here for the practiced puzzle-solver. With colorful illustrations and graphics on every page, this fun little puzzle book is designed to sharpen your mind while also providing plenty of entertainment. Want to train your brain? Click here to purchase this great deal.


The Dictionary of Bullshit: A Shamelessly Opinionated Guide to All That is Absurd, Misleading and Insincere

List Price: $12.95
Sale Price: $3.98

In this hilarious, irreverent, and generally subversive compendium of what passes for discourse today, Nick Webb savages the blatant deceits, clichés, jargon, and spin found in the realms of politics, self-help, marketing, the media, all things new age, statistics, science, and business. Find out more about this title now.


The Calm Coloring Book