War was nearly unrelenting in colonial America. Europeans fought Europeans from other empires. They fought Indians.  And sometimes, alliances of Indian groups and Europeans faced off against each other. The British Empire emerged victorious from nearly a-century-and-a-half of colonial warfare, which culminated in the Seven Years’ War (the American theater of which is better known as the French and Indian War). They won that contest for Eastern North America with guns and money, of course, but also by building effective transportation, communication, and intelligence networks.

The strategic heart of the Seven Years’ War lay in the Ohio Country--especially the area running from backcountry Pennsylvania, north to Lake Erie, and west as far as Detroit. It was in this riverine world that Imperial armies, land-hungry colonists, and Indian groups all converged, with violent results. Far from their coastal strongholds, British success depended on successfully transporting supplies, munitions, and information. So they obsessed over transportation routes. This unattributed hand-drawn map comes from the recently digitized “Papers Relating to Philadelphia” in the Library’s George Chalmers collection. It documents the roads and waterways between Fort Pitt (modern-day Pittsburgh) and Presqu'Isle, in Lake Erie. The map even contains notations of obstacles on certain paths, which routes could best handle carriages, and improvements that might make various spurs more efficient. This attention to detail was characteristic.

Every few days during the summer of 1760, Henry Boquet, a British officer, wrote detailed letters to his superiors about transportation in the region. Boquet’s main concern was shoring up “the communications with The Ohio,” especially roads linking Fort Pitt with Maryland, Virginia, and eastern Pennsylvania. The problem, he surmised, was that two roads already served this purpose. Maintaining both demanded precious manpower. In three detailed pages, Boquet advocated abandoning these roads and creating one new road, routed “in such a manner as to serve equally these three Provinces.” It would ideally run through population centers that could take some responsibility for road maintenance.

To build the case for the new road, Boquet wrote frequent letters to other officials describing problems with existing transportation routes.  In mid-June, he complained about impassable roads that often left waggons stalled.  A few days earlier, he had noted that “Wheelwrights are much wanted … as several waggons are daily breaking.” Nor did Boquet focus solely on overland travel.  In a July letter, he discussed efforts to acquire whale boats along the Niagara River. 

As Bouquet made clear, a desire to strengthen communications “with the Ohio” animated his efforts.  He had assigned George Croghan with gathering intelligence about French movement in the region. Though not a military man, Croghan was a good fit for the task because of his background as a fur trader, which meant he had existing economic relationships with Indians. The British relied on Indians to get places they could not, and ferry information back from near French outposts.  

Croghan served as the main point of contact, vetting the information that his Indian contacts collected.  When Croghan passed along intelligence, he might vouch for an informant as “an Indian of good Reputation who I had imployed[sic] last Fall to bring … notice of any designs the Enemy might form against us.” On another occassion he described his source as “A Six Nations Indian who has lived many years among the Wyandotte.” The point was to establish the credibility of their reports. An imperial world war turned on Britain’s ability to establish the veracity of this sort of intelligence and transmit it efficiently, deep in the American backcountry. 

The Seven Years’ War was a conventional war of manpower, resources, and strategy.  But due to the scarcity of established channels for information exchange, it was also a war in which knowledge was powerful.  Having reliable sources of information, and transportation infrastructure on which to transmit separated winners from losers.

Further Reading

On the importance of information to colonization in other parts of North America, see Katherine Grandjean,American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); and Alejandra Dubcovsky, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

About the Early American Manuscripts Project

In January 2017, thousands gathered on Fifth Avenue and the surrounding area for the Women’s March. But this wasn’t the first time that this street was the home for a massive demonstration: almost fifty years ago, it was a primary thoroughfare for the first Earth Day celebration.

Earth Day began as the brainchild of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who tied the teach-in concept used by contemporary Vietnam War protesters to the environmentalist movement. After proposing the idea of a nationwide environmental teach-in in September 1969, Nelson formed the nonprofit Environmental Action, Inc. to act as a planning group for the big event, set for April 22, 1970. He hired law student Denis Hayes to organize Earth Day on the national level. In turn, local groups handled the logistics for regional events. One such group was the Environmental Action Coalition of New York, formed to coordinate New York City’s Earth Day events and maintained afterward as a locus for environmental awareness and activism. The New York Public Library holds the records of the Environmental Action Coalition, as well as the papers of its first president Harry R. Marshall, in its Manuscripts and Archives Division. These archival collections include press releases, news clippings, administrative files, posters, and other ephemera, which offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the workings of this special interest group and the inaugural Earth Day celebration.

Both the planning and response to Earth Day reflected the push-and-pull between moderate and more radical interests of the time.  While Senator Nelson was inspired by Vietnam protest tactics, he was quick to distinguish Earth Day as an educational, non-partisan, and non-radical occasion in order to capture a broad base of support. However, the core of the environmental movement at that time was strongly connected to other liberal causes.  These individuals, including Denis Hayes, were heavily involved with Earth Day’s execution and were interested in a more politicized agenda. Thus, while Environmental Action, Inc. was a registered nonprofit prohibited from partisan action, Hayes quickly created the Environmental Action Foundation to handle such activities. After April, Environmental Action, Inc. dropped its tax-free educational status so that it, too, could engage in lobbying and similar pursuits.

Even the date selected for Earth Day became politicized. Some conservatives seized on the fact that April 22 was the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, arguing that this revealed an underlying current of communist influence. One Georgia comptroller spent $1,600 of taxpayer money sending telegrams to various government officials alerting them to this connection. (Once this use of funds was discovered, he paid for the telegrams himself.) Nevertheless, Senator Nelson received his strong showing of support, with nationwide participation estimated at as many as 20 million people.

The festivities for Earth Day in New York City took shape around two primary locations: Fifth Avenue and Union Square.  Some balked at these choices, seeing the natural beauty of Central Park as a more appropriate base. However, the EAC defended its decision, noting that “Earth Day is a day of action, education, and involvement — a day when people go into the streets — the teeming streets, if you will — and there have brought forcibly to their attention the filth of the gutters, the stench of the air, the screech of auto horns, the grime of the subways, the taste of contaminated food, and the roar of construction.” That being said, the EAC took strides to make both areas pleasant for Earth Day participants. A crew gathered in Union Square the morning of the event to clean, and arrangements were made to dispose of any resultant litter.  More logistically impressive was the closing of streets to car traffic: the mayor’s office closed Fifth Avenue from 59th Street to 14th Street from 12 to 2 p.m., and 14th Street was closed from 7th Avenue to 2nd Avenue from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. During this period, The New York Times noted that carbon monoxide levels at Union Square dropped from 13 parts per million to 2.

Thanks to the street closures, Union Square was set up with close to 100 booths educating visitors on various environmental causes, such as pollution, food additives, waste disposal, and population growth, as well as the two city-specific concerns of lead paint detection and pest control. The National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, American Cancer Society, Planned Parenthood, United Farm Workers Union, and American Littoral Society were among the exhibitors.  Speakers included folk singer Pete Seegar — Earth Day’s honorary chairman for New York City — Margaret Mead, Ed Koch, Leonard Bernstein, and the cast of Hair. The focal point was a giant inflatable bubble constructed of polyethylene and filled with clean air. Visitors could walk through to experience a respite from air pollution — though as news accounts pointed out, the air was soon compromised when participants took the opportunity to engage in some recreational drug use. The Times estimated that about 100,000 people visited the festivities in Union Square, with around 20,000 present at any one time.

Moving uptown, for two hours Fifth Avenue became a pedestrian mall.  Storefronts set out tiny cafes and picnicking areas, Girl Scouts handed out flowers, the New York Horticultural Society donated a tree to process down the closed street, and Rockefeller Center hosted a children’s art show. The New York Public Library’s 42nd Street location hosted its own impressive line-up of speakers on its front steps: Roger Caras, Marya Mannes, Alfred Kazin, Mayor John Lindsay, and Kurt Vonnegut all made remarks. The musical group Voices of East Harlem was drawn by horses on a flower-bedecked flat-bed truck down the avenue before performing outside the Library. Vonnegut’s commentary bleakly cut the prevailing optimism of the day: “Here we are again, the peaceful demonstrators, mostly young and mostly white.  Good luck to us, for I don’t know what sporting event the president [Nixon] may be watching at the moment. He should help us make a fit place for human beings to live.  Will he do it?  No.  So the war will go on.  Meanwhile, we go up and down Fifth Avenue picking up trash.”

Vonnegut’s ambivalence was shared by other observers, who criticized the superficial participation of corporations — most notably ConEd, who donated the use of an electric bus for event transportation — questioned the longevity of such public interest in environmental causes, and generally thought that the actions advocated at Earth Day did not go far enough toward enacting the social and regulatory changes that would set the planet on a sustainable course. An op-ed in the Long Island Press called Earth Day a “flop” and “muddled carnival”; another critic, reminiscent of Vonnegut, labelled it a “nice, good middle-class issue” that distracted from less palatable ones like the Vietnam War. But the festivities did not stop at words and flyers: Earth Day resolutions were passed in forty-two statehouses. New York’s Governor Rockefeller signed an anti-pollution bill, and New Jersey’s Governor Cahill approved a state Environmental Protection Agency.  Moreover, the popularity of Earth Day made it clear that environmental issues had massive grassroots support.  Congress recessed for the day, so that representatives could make various local appearances with their constituents.  The following day, Congress introduced legislation to make it an annual holiday. Organizer Denis Hayes embodied the conflicted reaction to Earth Day, but publicly framed it in optimistic terms: “It will be a difficult fight. Earth Day is the beginning.”

Further Reading

To support research of environmental themes, the Manuscripts and Archives Division holds the National Audubon Society records and Breathe Again records, as well as the papers of Lettie Gay Carson and Jim Mason.  For published sources, including those informing this blog post, consider reading the following:

• “Anti-Earth Day Wires Cost Official $1,600.” New York Times. April 23, 1970.

• Bird, David. "In the Aftermath of Earth Day: City Gains New Leverage." New York Times. April 24, 1970.

• “The Good Earth.” New York Times. April 23, 1970.

• Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Revised and updated edition. Washington: Island Press, 2005.

• Lelyveld, Joseph. “Millions Join Earth Day Observances Across the Nation: Mood is Joyful as City Gives Its Support.” New York Times. April 23, 1970.

• MacBride, Samantha. Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.

• Mowrey, Marc and Tim Redmond. Not in Our Backyard: The People and Events That Shaped America’s Modern Environmental Movement. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993.

• Rome, Adam. The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013.

• Von Hoffman, Nicholas. “Earth Day a ‘Flop’?” Long Island Press. April 29, 1970.

About the Informed Archives Series

Archival collections and rare printed works at The New York Public Library preserve unique evidence of human activity and achievement that form a basis for the study of political, social, economic, and cultural history.  These materials have special importance not only to scholars, but also to citizens interested in historic parallels with current events. The Informed Archives blog series aims to inspire community engagement by highlighting particular collections, contextualizing their creation, and promoting their contents.   Through illustrating the vitality of our shared documentary record, we hope to encourage conversation and new readership.

Of course you could show her some love with flowers, a nice card, and a hug, but this Mother’s Day (psst, it’s May 14!) we’ve got exactly what you need for the strong, paradigm-shattering mom (or mom-figure) in your life.

1. A Guide to Breaking the Rules

What do Sojourner Truth, Marie Curie, and Joan Jett have in common? They made history by behaving badly. Bad Girls Throughout History by Ann Shen documents the impact of these rule-breakers with beautiful illustrations and compelling essays. Don't miss our author interview below, where we sit down with Shen to hear about her inspires her, and what she's learned from these 100 remarkable women.

Read up on these trailblazers!

2. Feminist Tote and Pin

Haul your feminist literature in style! Even better: add a simple, bold pin to any accessory, including your favorite knitted hat.

Tote it loud. Pin it proud.

3. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Gear

Adapted from the author’s radical TED Talk, the short, powerful essay We Should All Be Feminists speaks a big message that everyone should hear. And don’t miss Adichie’s follow-up, the epistolary Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

Read it, love it, become a fan.

4. Fearless Necklace

Channel your inner warrior with this hand-cast necklace from Chocolate and Steel. Joan of Arc’s timeless quote, “I am not afraid. I was born to do this,” is etched in gold.

Wear that courage!

5. A Complete Prep Set

With a mini sewing kit, emergency bandages, and more, the Pinch Mom Kit will keep her ready for whatever the future brings. Plus, there’s Stuff Every Mom Should Know, a handy guide that serves up indispensable wisdom, such as “Comebacks for Unsolicited Parenting Advice.”

Stay prepared and know your stuff.

A Conversation with  Ann Shen, Author and Illustrator of Bad Girls Throughout History

Who is your biggest inspiration?

My biggest inspiration is not one person, but lots of different people who run their own businesses and lives according to their own rules. I feel so inspired when I read interviews and when I meet people in my daily life who are fully in charge of their own lives, and remain warm, grounded, and positive.

Where are you from?

I was born and raised in Southern California, and I currently live and work in Los Angeles.

When did you start creating?

I always wrote and illustrated books when I was a kid, but I decided to go pro in my mid-twenties when I went back to school to study illustration. After graduation, I dove headfirst into design and illustration work and haven't looked back since!

How did this book come to be?

Bad Girls Throughout History started out as a zine I made in art school; it was an illustration for a publishing class. I decided to make the kind of work I wanted to see, and the kind of dream work I wanted to do. At that time in my life, I was looking for role models who made their own paths and listened to their hearts because that's what I needed to hear about.

I read an article about Ada Lovelace and was absolutely inspired and surprised to find out that she was the world's first computer programmer – not first FEMALE, but FIRST. In my research I found out more about her salacious and complex personal life, and that inspired me even more. It sparked this realization that all the women who achieved incredible things were complicated, real people with doubts and fears, but overcame them anyway. That was a super inspiring concept to me, and I couldn't stop sharing all that I found with everyone who would listen.

Fortunately, the word spread with the people who really got the idea, and a few years later my literary agent found the project on a blog and reached out to me about turning it into a book (only my hope and dream in life!) and we connected with great people at Chronicle Books to make it happen.

What are you reading now?

I'm always reading a few books at a time. I like a balance of learning, self-improvement, and fun. So in the mornings I'm currently reading Eat Pretty Every Day by Jolene Hart, which has really easy-to-read daily pages of great nutritional info. In the evening, I'm reading The First 20 Minutes by Gretchen Reynolds, and a fun fiction book, Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas.

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Journalists protect democracies by doing their job well, says George Packer, staff writer at The New Yorker and past winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Packer will join National Review executive editor Reihan Salam for a discussion of current events, moderated by the president of The New York Public Library, Anthony Marx, on Friday, May 12. The event is available by livestream.

This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Chana Pollack has been the Forward's archivist for the past two decades, providing research, translation, and production of original Forward archival content with an eye on the contemporary context. The Forward is the most significant Jewish voice in American journalism, featuring outstanding reporting on cultural, social, and political issues with English and Yiddish platforms, building on a century-old legacy maintained in our archives leading to a deeper understanding of what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. The Forward's archival photos and recent exhibition PRESSED are part of an ongoing digital mapping project with Urban Archive. Chana recently published this essay on archival silences in the Forward archives. Forward archival content, translated from the Yiddish original, is featured as part of the Forward's original podcast based on their historic advice column known as "The Bintl Brief." They were the archivist for A Living Lens, showcasing the Forward's photo collection and a featured translator in Have I Got A Story For You, presenting fiction from the Forward's past century. They were camera operator, editor, and producer for the Forward's video series Yiddish Writers Monologues, featuring interviews with several "last known" Yiddish writers. They recently helped actor David Duchovny recover his grandfather's Yiddish writing.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

I was reading this essay by David Duchovny inThe Atlantic in 2021, and noticing his mention of his grandfather Moshe Duchovny. I read there that his grandfather, Yiddish writer Moshe Duchovny, was a staff writer for the Forverts, our historic Yiddish daily, and found the name to be unfamiliar, but I was able to find his obituary in our back issues, correct the historical record (he wrote for the Tog-Morgn Zhurnal), and the idea to conduct further research took off from there.

What brought you to the Library?

I have been researching in the Dorot Division for over two decades now and consider it my place of worship!

What research tools could you not live without?

I would be nothing without Yiddish literary lexicons and dictionaries, encyclopedias, and librarians. And not that you asked about this exactly, but as tech is so important these days and influences research too, I have to tell you that my iPhone is the handiest MacGyveriest tool. Working at a news media outlet, it's really critical that I be able to turn research around fairly quickly. So, I use it to photograph the microfilm screen and often find that a faster way to send back my findings. Also, it reduces the need to scan or order scans. Anything to cut through bureaucracy while maintaining archival integrity of the materials is handy, I find.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

Dorothy Thompson's interview with Hitler.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

I recently discovered the 1956 (Knopf) children's book by Jean Merrill and Ronni Solbert, The Travels of Marco, in which a pigeon alights atop our historic neon Forverts sign and travels the Lower East Side neighborhood discovering the joys of a diverse NYC while delighting in our history. Finding that book forced me to do further research on the couple that created it and that led me to uncover Ronni Solbert's gorgeous world of illustrations.  Also my spouse bought me the most amazing book for my 60th birthday a couple of weeks ago by Polish Nobel Prize winning novelist Olga Tokarczuk called The Lost Soul. I love art books and this one is formatted with delicate sketches on mylar in between gorgeous illustrations and poetic text. The message I took away from there is that you will likely always find yourself at home. And while I love to travel, if there's one thing we all had a chance to learn this past year or so is that home evokes things beyond the comfort of material possessions. Something like that. I think maybe we all aspire to make home more like a library in a way, as a place for the soul to rest safely while expanding.

Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn.

While I knew that Moshe Duchovny had written for the "other" Yiddish daily, I had no idea what type of writer he was. Being able to sit and page through some of the microfilmed back issues of his publication Der Tog-Morgn-Zshurnal/The Day-Morning Journal of the 1950s and 60s, to not only read his pieces and to learn of his being an engaging interviewer and a sensitive reviewer, but to see this writing within the context of the daily news, advertisements, and cultural announcements there, helped recreate a sense of the writer and his time. His obituary listed him as having died suddenly, early in November 1960. Leafing through the back issues showed me his having died shortly after the paper reported on the infamous Eichmann Nazi war crimes trial, something I know to have been deeply captivating and also extremely stress-inducing for many in the community.

How do you maintain your research momentum?

I find it hardest when I have to pivot back to other queries or responsibilities, true, as I had to with the Duchovny item. I would really love to find his serialized novels, said to be published in the Yiddish press, so I am grateful that the Dorot librarians kindly offered me the option to put the microfilm on hold for a few weeks—super helpful. And I think you just have to have faith and keep reaching out to folks who might have known him or read him while he was a living breathing Yiddish writer of New York. Maybe he researched at NYPL too?

After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?

I frequently use social media to express what I've seen while down the rabbit hole of Yiddish journalism research, and to gauge other's reactions and experiences, and I am fortunate to have folks I work with, especially our Innovation Editor Talya Zax, interested in hearing about my findings, my failures, my insights, and imaginary wanderings. I'm married to a poet and Yiddish translator as well, so I am beyond lucky to be able to share the archival and research experience deeply with them too. I try to walk or ride a bike to and from NYPL to kind of get my mind back on the current era! And I try not to eat my way around town, but there are many great eats around 42nd St! 

What tabs do you currently have open on your computer?

• Am constantly on our digitized Yiddish back issues.
• Can't live as a translator without Thesaurus.com .
• Am in the middle of trying to learn more about this old town Slonim so I've got this open.
• I love archival sweaters.
• This item from NARA blew my mind about old seals and fasteners.
• I always have us, Forward.com on call.

Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?

Be okay with going slowly and watching yourself get distracted. Pay attention to that off-ramp you just took. For instance, there are some gorgeous illustrated old Yiddish advertisements as well as fascinating classified ads that can really help offer context when researching articles that purport to be the MOST important thing. I started collecting lots of those old ads from our issues and found them so historically relevant and visually interesting, we just made an ebook of them to offer subscribers. Also, I cannot get enough of old obituary notices in the Yiddish press.

Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?

Be kind to the librarians. When I was a younger Fulbright researcher in Eastern Europe, I was actually advised to bring gifts to the research librarians there to help facilitate my searches! You bet I did it, and my budget afforded mostly lots of American chocolate bars to help grease the research engines but I really really was moved by how hard it seemed sometimes for them to be able to help researchers. One elderly film librarian marked out sections of archival film I wanted copied by delicately tying thread through the sprocket holes, something I'd normally seen done using a China marker. Times were hard there sure, but libraries everywhere often struggle financially for basics. I still feel that it's really important to show some love to these folks who work very hard for little financial compensation, to free up information for us all.
 

This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Emily Brooks is a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellow at the New York Public Library. Her book Gotham’s War Within a War: Anti-Vice Policing, Militarism, and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in New York City, 1934-1945, is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. She received her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2019 and previously held a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship. She has written about policing, gender, race, and city politics in the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Urban History, and the Washington Post, among other places.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

I was reading a lot of histories about policing women in the early twentieth century and noticed that they all ended in the early 1930s or before. I started wondering where the story went next and began looking into policing in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. I noticed that discussions about crime and policing changed significantly during the mobilization for World War II, so my project became about the policing regime that developed in post-Tammany New York City and how it changed during the war. Once I began looking for it I saw that debates about policing and crime were central to the reform governance proposed by Fiorello LaGuardia when he became mayor. As I dug more into the time period and the primary sources, I found that themes that interested me and that felt deeply relevant today, including questions of police reform, militarism, and racial and gendered criminalization and violence were all key issues for New Yorkers in these years. 

What research tools could you not live without? 

My phone, my Tiny Scanner application, and my Dropbox account. Organization does not come easily to me, and I used to struggle with keeping photos of archival research in accessible places. A friend and mentor recommended Tiny Scanner to me a few years ago, and it has improved my process immensely. You can create multi-page pdfs and then save them wherever you save your material (I use Dropbox). I title my documents with the folder number, box number, and archival collection. That way, I always have the information that I need for citations. 

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

Recently I found a photo of a young woman with her sailor boyfriend in Times Square in 1942 in a file created about her by a social worker after she was arrested for prostitution. This was unexpected because these files do not usually include photos. This photo was also special because it was clearly labeled with the year and location and because the young woman looked so joyful in it. She was grinning and wearing lipstick with a stylish hairdo; her excitement to be in Times Square radiated out of the image. In the past, I have also found a detailed description of young women breaking out of a juvenile detention center in Brooklyn in 1944 using a nail file, sheets, and lots of gumption. Because I write about policing and criminalization I encounter many stories of violence and abuse. But, even the records of surveillance and criminalization that I work in are suffused with resistance, joy, and humor. 

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

I have been reading Judith Richardson’s Possessions: The History and Uses of Hauntings in the Hudson Valley for fun, and I’ve been learning a lot. I was interested to learn that Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow may have been influenced by stories of hauntings connected to the death of enslaved woman Anna Dorothea Swarts in 1755. Her owner, a wealthy landowner, likely killed her, but was not convicted. Stories of her haunting the land where she died were passed down through time and morphed to reflect changes in the local culture. These hauntings were partly a reflection of the community’s efforts to process the violence against Swarts and the fact that her killer was never punished. I highly recommend the book as compelling cultural and social history as well as a great ghostly read. 

How do you maintain your research momentum?

Sometimes it can be challenging. When I am feeling burnt out on whatever particular part of the research process I am in, I try to switch to another area of work. So, if I have been in the archives a lot and am feeling exhausted, I try to take time reviewing the documents that I have photographed, or reading some new historiography that I had set aside. I often have multiple writing or teaching projects underway at the same time, so I will also switch between them if I want to think about something new. Also, taking breaks is essential for maintaining momentum, so playing with my family and watching tv are very important! 

After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?

I take my toddler to the playground, where we slide relentlessly until she demands to go home. After she goes to bed, I watch scripted television shows with a supernatural element. They must be the right combination of spooky and trashy. Currently, I’m watching Evil, and it is fantastic. 

Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?

Start with the footnotes of your favorite book and go from there. If you are doing archival research, don’t be discouraged if you have unproductive research trips. I have found that in the early stage of a project it can take a bit of time to develop an understanding of the scope of your research question or interests. When you are in this early stage you have to let your instincts guide you toward what feels the most relevant and resist the urge to read or photograph everything. As you sift through the sources, your familiarity with your characters and topic will grow and you will circle in on what feels most important. And you may have to return to archives after you thought you were finished, which I have to do right now and feels like a pain, but is just part of the process. 

On November 4, 2021, Doc Chatters read between the lines of the manuscripts of one 18th-century female novelist. 

A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Thirty-Seven, Carolyn Vega, curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg  Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library, and Hilary Havens, Associate Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, explored the manuscripts of English novelist Frances Burney, analyzing her practice of textual recycling and recovering sensational passages from the manuscript of her popular novel Cecilia.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Thirty-Seven: Primary Sources

Carolyn and Hilary examined the following documents: 

Episode Thirty-Seven: Readings and Resources

Frances Burney, Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress, edited by Peter Sabor and Margaret Anne Doody (Oxford World's Classics, 1988). An updated edition, edited by Hilary Havens, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. 

Hilary Havens, “Revisions and Revelations in Frances Burney’s Cecilia Manuscript” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 55: 3 (Summer 2015), 537-558. 

Peter Sabor, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Frances Burney (Cambridge University Press, 2007). 

Catherine M. Parisian, Frances Burney's Cecilia: A Publishing History (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016). 

Biography of Frances Burney (1752-1840) from The Burney Centre at McGill University, which brings together archival material on the Burney family from around the world. Its holdings include microfilm, photocopies, and scans of the major Burney collections at the Berg Collection of The New York Public Library, the British Library and the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

The Burney Society honors Frances Burney d'Arblay (1752-1840), a woman who recorded everything from Johnsonian wit to George III's fits, from Evelina's entrance into the world to Napoleon's last stand. Her acute observations about her family, friends, and 18th-century society show us how much, and how little, life and literature have changed in two centuries.

Join the Doc Chat Conversation

Doc Chat episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar,  and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Doc Chat Channel of NYPL's blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!

In this episode, NYPL's Meredith Mann met with Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, to celebrate the release of Debby's new book Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age.  They dug into how a young Jewish immigrant became the proprietress of one of Manhattan's most notorious bordellos: how Polly Adler rose to prominence in the nightclub scene, rubbing shoulders with the Mob and the Algonquin Round Table, while carefully avoiding the eyes of Prohibition enforcers and the city's vice squad, the Committee of Fourteen.

Episode Recording and Transcript

A transcript of this event is available here.

Related Resources

• Polly Adler's autobiography A House Is Not  A Home and its 1964 film adaptation

• Guide to the Committee of Fourteen records, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

• Guide and digitized images for the Committee of Fifteen records, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

• Debby recommends Night After Night, Mae West's debut film

About the Work/Cited Series

Work/Cited is a program series that showcases the latest scholarship supported by the rich collections of The New York Public Library with a behind-the-scenes look at how the finished product was inspired, researched, and created. Catch up on previous episodes on the NYPL blog, where videos and links to related resources are posted shortly after each program. Sign up for NYPL's Research Newsletter or view the events calendar to hear about future programs as they are announced.

This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Mosi Secret is an independent journalist and writer based in Brooklyn and a recipient of the Library’s Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship. Mosi’s feature work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, New York Magazine, and on the podcast This American Life, and he has worked as a reporter at the New York Times, ProPublica, and alternative weekly newspapers. His first book, Teaching Them: The 1960s Experiment to Desegregate the Boarding Schools of the South, will come out in 2023 with Little, Brown.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

My project began as a tip back in 2015. I was a reporter at the New York Times when an old family friend who was the father of my best friend from childhood contacted me to suggest that I look into the little known history of private school desegregation in the American South. This elder friend had been one of dozens of Black students chosen by a small group called the Stouffer Foundation to receive scholarships at all-white boarding schools in the late 1960s. He imagined a short newspaper story at the time, but I ended up finding all of these layers to the material. The most interesting discovery was probably that this scholarship program was largely designed to cure elite, white students of their bigotry through exposure to Black students. The history was so rich that I wrote a magazine feature and made a podcast, and now I’m going even deeper with the book. 

What brought you to the Library?

I first learned about the Allen Room in a nightclub! I was out dancing (pre-pre-COVID) and met another writer on the dance floor who screamed in my ear about a room in the Library with pristine quiet and long-term borrowing privileges. Heaven! Even then I was struggling with working from home, so I signed up right away. I’m not sure how I survived so long without NYPL. 

What research tools could you not live without?

MaRLI; Oxford Bibliographies; JSTOR.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

A few years ago, I found tape recorded interviews from the 1960s and 70s with the children who participated in the school desegregation program. A big challenge in writing narrative nonfiction on such an old subject is dealing with failing memories. The archival audio was essentially a time capsule that allowed me to recover the participants' mental states from decades ago.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Hmmm, that’s a hard one to isolate because I constantly have a bunch of books open. But most of my outside reading is in the areas of metaphysics and psychology. I’m really interested in the idea that unknown abilities lurk in our subconscious minds, and lately I’ve been reading about the practice of using hypnotherapy to unlock memories and abilities. I’m going to try it. 

Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn.

I have been researching this history for six years now, and at various times I have felt fatigued with the material, so much so that at times it was hard to imagine how I would ever finish. But I went on a fellowship retreat recently and took the time to read some essays by Ralph Emerson called Representative Men. Emerson was really interested in the idea of exemplary individuals (for him, they were men), who are models for the rest of us in constructing our lives, and who expand our collective sense of what’s possible. Gradually it occurred to me that some of these same ideas were floating around in the history I’m exploring, overlapping with some of DuBois’s ideas about the Talented Tenth. I realized that my book is actually about how much power individuals have to change society, and I reworked a lot of my structure to reflect that.

How do you maintain your research momentum?

I give my curiosity free reign and welcome nonlinear diversions as a part of my process. Also, momentum flagging isn’t the worst thing. Often my work benefits from taking a step back and returning with a new perspective. Keeping my notes organized (I write with an application called Scrivener) is key for that. 

After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?

My favorite thing to do is practice piano. I started playing in my mid-30s, so it’s definitely a labor of love. But few things bring me more pleasure.

Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?

Follow your passions wherever they take you, but do it with discipline. Return to the work every day and look for new connections. Write down the interesting ideas that pop into your head.

Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?

I can’t wait until we can sit down together with our masks off. Until then, please say hello. It doesn’t have to be THAT quiet.

On December 2, 2021, Doc Chat glimpsed the subway of the 1970s through the eyes of one photographer.

A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Thirty-Nine, NYPL curator Julie Golia and Kim Phillips-Fein, Professor of History at New York University, explored a collection of evocative photographs of the New York City subway system in the 1970s by Alen MacWeeney, discussing what the images reveal about the city during a decade of crisis and transformation.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Thirty-Nine: Primary Sources

Julie and Kim examined the following images: 

You can peruse all 43 images from this series on NYPL's Digital Collections. 

Episode Thirty-Nine: Readings and Resources

Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (St. Martin's Press, 2005). 

Kim Phillips-Fein, Fear City:  New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (Metropolitan Books, 2017). 

Alen MacWeeney, Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More (New England College Press, 2007). 

www.alenmacweeney.com (Alen MacWeeney's website)

Tony Silver and Henry Chaifant, Style Wars (documentary, 1983, 2004).

Join the Doc Chat Conversation

Doc Chat episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar,  and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Doc Chat Channel of NYPL's blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!

Among the signature items of the newly opened Polonsky Exhibition of the New York Public Library’s Treasures are a desk, chair, and accoutrements that were used by Charles Dickens and came from his country home, Gad’s Hill Place. Aside from this desk set, NYPL is home to nearly 100 volumes once owned and used by Dickens in his Gad’s Hill library. One of the books from Gad’s Hill Place, acquired a century ago by New York financier Carl H. Pforzheimer, demonstrates an important link between Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, another author represented in the Polonsky Exhibition.

Between 1918 and 1922 Pforzheimer built up a small but noteworthy gathering of materials relating to the novelist Charlotte Brontë. At a time when he was beginning to establish himself as one of the preeminent collectors of English literature, Pforzheimer quickly acquired all of Brontë’s published work, several autograph letters, and the original manuscript of one of the author’s first short stories. Since he never seems to have gone after materials related to Emily or Anne, Pforzheimer seems to have had a special interest in the eldest of the three Brontë sisters.

A significant portion of Pforzheimer’s personal library now forms the core of the New York Public Library's Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle. Though the Collection’s focus is primarily the Romantic period (roughly 1790–1830), it contains important print and manuscript collections by and about early Victorian writers including Brontë and contemporaries such as George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. As children of the Romantic era, their juvenile works remain relevant Romantic texts, especially when viewed in a larger literary context. For instance, a fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Barrett published her first work The Battle of Marathon in 1820, the same year that Percy Bysshe Shelley published Prometheus Unbound and John Keats published Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St Agnes and other Poems. (The Pforzheimer copy of The Battle of Marathon is only one of 15 known to survive and is inscribed by the author.)  

Carl H. Pforzheimer purchased his first Charlotte Brontë item in October 1918, when he acquired a copy of The Professor (1857)—a novel published posthumously even though it was the first to be written—from the sale of collector William T. Emmett.[1] One month later at a sale of duplicate volumes from the library of industrialist Henry E. Huntington (whose collection became the basis for the Huntington Library in California), Pforzheimer added copies of Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853) to his growing cache. An early Pforzheimer Library account book indicates that Pforzheimer also owned a copy of Jane Eyre (1847); this copy was likely purchased at one of the two aforementioned sales but deaccessioned before the Collection arrived at NYPL in 1986.

When the vast library of Shelley bibliographer H. Buxton Forman was auctioned off in 1920, Pforzheimer emerged as a principal buyer. It was at this sale that he purchased the original manuscript of Brontë’s “Adventures of Ernest Alembert.” Written on sixteen pages when the author was fourteen, this tale chronicles the adventures of the title character as he travels to witness the wonders of the supernatural world of “Faery.” A bound collection of five Brontë letters was also purchased at the Buxton Forman sale. The first two letters, written to her publisher William Smith Williams, record changes made to the second edition of Jane Eyre’s preface and Brontë’s writing process. Recounting her experience writing Shirley, Brontë confesses: "I suppose it will grow in maturity in time, as grass grows or corn ripens; but I cannot force it, it makes slow progress so far." The final letter in the volume, dated April 11, 1854, announces to lifelong friend Ellen Nussey her engagement to Arthur Bell Nicholl. Charlotte’s traveling writing desk, where some of these letters may have been written, is on display in the Polonsky Exhibition.

In September 1922 Pforzheimer made one final addition to his collection of Brontëana: a copy of the first edition, first issue of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.[2] Written under "veiled" names, Charlotte (Currer), Emily (Ellis), and Acton (Anne) released their first published work "into an unsympathetic world in the summer of 1846." The small collection of poems was soon declared a commercial failure; only two copies were sold during the initial print run. Such poor sales led Charlotte to conclude: "Neither we nor our poems were at all wanted."

An elusive and desirable object in its own right, the particular copy of Poems purchased by Pforzheimer in the fall of 1922 is extraordinary because it once belonged to Dickens. His armorial bookplate and a sales label dated June 1870 affirm that the small book bound in green cloth with gold lettering was part of the Gad’s Hill Place library at the time of Dickens’s death. It was almost certainly purchased by Dickens about 1848 or slightly thereafter—a date which coincided with the growing popularity of the Brontë sisters in England and America after the 1847 release of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey.[3] At that time, it formed part of Dickens’s working library of several hundred titles, ranging from literature to natural history (especially scientific explorations), art history, political thought, social reform, domestic and international manners housed at Gad’s Hill Place, his home for the last decade of his life.[4] The Brontë volume serves as a tangible record of Dickens’s reading habits and his familiarity with the Brontës’s work.[5] It, along with the other books originally in Dickens’s Gad’s Hill Library, remains available to those researching Dickens, the Brontë sisters, or 19th century literature in general.

[1] At the Emmett sale Pforzheimer also purchased, among other items, a copy of the first Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns’s Poems (1787) containing a manuscript of the poem “To the Woodlark” in the poet’s hand.

[2] In October 1918 Pforzheimer purchased the Robert Hoe copy of the second issue of Poems. The first and second issues differ only in their title pages—with the second issue of 1848 bearing the imprint of Smith, Elder, & Co.

[3] This date can be determined by the binding. Wise notes that "many copies [of the 1848 second issue] …were put up in the original cloth boards prepared for the first issue of 1846." The Pforzheimer copy, then, appears to be an unrecorded variant since the opposite is the case: the Aylott and Jones title page is combined with the 1848 binding which has "Poems / By / Currer, Ellis / and Acton, / Bell. / 4/-" stamped upon the upper cover.

[4] This particular copy of Bronte’s Poems is described in the manuscript listing of the library at Gad’s Hill Place, now housed at the Morgan Library & Museum, and the printed listing edited by J. H. Stonehouse and published in 1935. It is the only Brontë volume listed.

[5] The other Gad’s Hill volume held by the Pforzheimer Collection is a copy of the 1821 edition of P. B. Shelley’s Queen Mab. Though it has Dickens’s bookplate and the sale label, it is not mentioned in either the printed or the manuscript catalog. Both the printed and manuscript catalogs note that Dickens owned the 1847 edition of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley edited by Mary Shelley. The manuscript catalog indicates that Dickens also owned the 1866 edition of the above work.

On December 9, 2021, Doc Chat read between the lines of the first printed account of Columbus's initial voyage to the Americas.

A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty, Paloma Celis Carbajal, Curator for Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies Collections, and Michael Inman, Curator of Rare Books, discussed the origins, content, distribution, and legacy of a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus, featured in the Library’s newly opened The Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, and offered innovative ideas on how to incorporate the document into teaching about the origins of colonialism in the Americas.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Forty: Primary Sources

Paloma and Michael focused their analysis on one document, held in the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library. The letter is digitized and available in full on NYPL's Digital Collections.

Letter of Columbus to Luis de Santangel, dated 15 February 1493; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1820056.

They used the following transcriptions and translations to prepare this episode:

The Letter of Columbus on the discovery of America: a facsimile of the pictorial edition, with a new and literal translation, and a complete reprint of the oldest four editions in Latin. Printed by order of the trustees of the Lenox Library. New York: The De Vinne Press, 1892.

Spanish letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant' Angel, escribando de racion of the kingdom of Aragon, dated 15 February 1493, reprinted in reduced facsimile, and tr. from the unique copy of the original edition. Printed by Johann Rosenbach at Barcelona early in April 1493, lately in the possession of Bernard Quaritch. London: G. Norman and Son, printers, 1893. 

Episode Forty: Readings and Resources

Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, Sevilla, 1552 (first edition).

Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, edited and translated by Nigel Griffin (Penguin Books, 1992). 

Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus), Los cuatro viajes; Testamento, edición de Consuelo Varela. (Alianza, 1986).

Crónicas de Indias: antología, edición de Mercedes Serna (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000).

The Diario of Christopher Columbus's first voyage to America, 1492-1493, abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas; transcribed and translated into English (University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).

Carlos Fuentes, The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World (Houghton Mifflin, 1992). https://legacycatalog.nypl.org/record=b11557153~S1 

Carlos Fuentes, El espejo enterrado: reflexiones sobre España y América (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992).

Eduardo Galeano, De Las venas abiertas de América Latina a Memoria del fuego(Montevideo : Universidad de la República, 1987). 

Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America.Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (Monthly Review Press, 1997).

Hernán Horna,A People's History of Latin America (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2014).

William Loren Katz,This Day in History: Feb. 2, 1512: Taíno Leader Hatuey Executed in Cuba, Zinn Education Project.

Miguel Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears:The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico(Beacon Press, 2006).

También la lluvia (Even the Rain), documentary, directed by Icíar Bollaín, 2012.

Howard Zinn, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress" in A People's History of the United States (Harper Perennial, 2015). Also available as an e-book.

More Doc Chats in 2022!

Doc Chat has wrapped its Fall 2021 season.  You can catch up on past episodes and explore helpful resources on the Doc Chat Channel of the NYPL blog. We'll kick off another lively and thought-provoking season in the the coming weeks. Make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter.

On December 16, 2021, Doc Chatters took a before-and-after virtual walking tour of the Lower East Side's historic synagogues. 

A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-One, Lyudmila Sholokhova, curator of the Dorot Jewish Division at NYPL, and Vladimir Levin, Director of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explored the photographs of Morris Huberland, a passionate photographer of New York City with particular interest in the Jewish Lower East Side. They analyzed Huberland's images as a source for studies of the complex and historical influences of synagogue architecture and discussed the photographer's role in documenting these institutions from their heyday to their decline in the 1960s and 1970s, when many were repurposed or demolished.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Forty-One: Primary Sources

Our speakers explored several photographs by Morris Huberland, including:

All of Huberland's synagogue photography can be accessed on NYPL's Digital Collections. 

Episode Forty-One: Readings and Resources

Hasia R, Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Indiana University Press, 2000).

Jo Renee Fine and Gerard R. Wolfe, The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side (Washington Mews Books, an imprint of New York University Press, 1978).

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art, the Center for Jewish Art.

Ellen Levitt, The Lost Synagogues of Manhattan: Including Shuls from Staten Island and Governors Island (Avotaynu Inc., 2013). 

Joyce Mendelsohn, The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited: A History and Guide to a Legendary New York Neighborhood(Columbia University Press, 2009).

Deborah D. Moore, Diana L. Linden, Daniel Soyer, Howard B. Rock, Annie Polland, and Jeffrey S. Gurock, Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People (New York University Press, 2017).

The Museum of Family History, "The Synagogues of New York City," 2011.

Gerard R. Wolfe, The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View (Empire State Editions, an imprint of Fordham University Press, 2013).

Additional questions? Email photography@nypl.org to reach our knowledgeable reference team.

More Doc Chats in 2022!

Doc Chat has wrapped its Fall 2021 season.  You can catch up on past episodes and explore helpful resources on the Doc Chat Channel of the NYPL blog. We'll kick off another lively and thought-provoking season in the the coming weeks. Make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter.

The New York Public Library's exhibition INterSECTS  presents excerpts from artist Peter Kuper’s forthcoming graphic novel, which he developed during his tenure as a fellow at The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in 2020–21. Finding himself virtually alone in the vast Beaux-Arts rooms and hallways of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Kuper began imagining arthropods occupying this unexpectedly and unprecedentedly vacant environment. The exhibition is on display in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building's Rayner Special Collections Wing through August 13, 2022.

Peter Kuper is an award-winning cartoonist and lifelong insect enthusiast, who has authored over two dozen graphic novels. His comics and illustrations have appeared regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Mad, and Charlie Hebdo. He lectures widely and teaches cartooning at Harvard University and the School of Visual Arts.

If you enjoyed the exhibition, or have an interest in arthropods in the world, Peter Kuper has recommended a range of titles, which you can find below, for readers of all ages—from his own work to the books that have inspired the art you'll find in INterSECTS. You can learn more about INterSECTS  and access free coloring pages and the exhibition audio guide by clicking here.

Selected Books by Peter Kuper

Ruins, 2015

Diario de Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico, 2009

The Metamorphosis, 2002

Kafkaesque: Fourteen Short Stories, 2018

Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, 2020

World War 3 Illustrated: 1979-2014 co-edited with Seth Tobocman, 2014

Drawn to New York, 2013

The System, 2012

Suggested Reading

Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillionsby Mark W. Moffett, 2010

The Ants by Edward O. Wilson, 1990

The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World by Edward D. Melillo, 2020

Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise by David Rothenberg, 2013

Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees by Thor Hanson, 2018

Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd, 2007

Edible Insects and Human Evolution by Julie J. Lesnik, 2018

Evolution of the Insects by David Grimaldi and Michael S. Engel, 2005

Extraordinary Insects: The Fabulous Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, 2019

Fine Lines: Vladimir Nabokov’s Scientific Art edited by Stephen H. Blackwell and Kurt Johnson, 2016

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, 2012

The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg, 2004

For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner, 2003

Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly by Sue Halpern, 2001

Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson, 2016

Here by Richard McGuire, 2014

The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise,Thrive, and Fall by Mark W. Moffett, 2019

Innumerable Insects: The Story of the Most Diverse and Myriad Animals on Earth by Michael S. Engel, 2018

Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles, 2010

Memoirs of Black Entomologists: Reflections on Childhood, University, and Career Experiences edited by Michelle Samuel-Foo, Eric W. Riddick, Alvin M. Simmons, and Willye W. Bryan, 2015 (on order)

Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian, 1705

Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, A Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution by Anurag Agrawal, 2017

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard, 2019

Nabokov’s Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius by Kurt Johnson and Steven L. Coats, 1999

Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson, 1994

Poemas solares (Solar poems) by Homero Aridjis, 2010

Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov, 1951

Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects by Jonathan Balcombe, 2021

Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt, by Gene Kritsky, 2015

Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present and Future by Lauren Redniss, 2015

Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army & Other Diabolical Insects by Amy Stewart, 2011

Suggested Books for YA Readers

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865 

Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis, 1927

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, 1960

Naturalist: A Graphic Adaptation by Edward O. Wilson, adapted by Jim Ottaviani and C. M. Butzer, 1994

The Way of the Hive: A Honey Bee’s Story by Jay Hosler, 2021

Selected Picture Books

Buzzing with Questions: The Inquisitive Mind of Charles Henry Turner by Janice N.Harrington, illustrated by Theodore Taylor, 2019

The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science by Joyce Sidman, 2018

The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce, 1996

Maria the Monarch by Homero Aridjis, translated by Eva Aridjis, and illustrated by Juan Palomino,  2017 (on order)

Monarca by Eva Aridjis and Leopoldo Gout, 2022 (on order)

Sam and the Firefly P. D. Eastman, 1958

Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg,  1988

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle,  1969

The New York Public Library has acquired the 1789 edition of Ewangelia též Episstoli, a Czech Gospel book. The description below was contributed by Hunter Corb of Michael Laird Rare Books, the seller of this unique publication.

Ewangelia též Episstoli na Neděle a Swátky přes celý Rok, gakož y Passyge Pána Krysta, dlé Wypsánj čtyr swatých Ewangelistů, eč. Wsse podlé řjmského Missálu Klimenta 8, a Vrbana 8; gakož y starodáwnjho Obyčege hlawnjho Kostela S. Wjta Muč w Arcybiskupstwj pražském naprawené a wydané.

Litomyšl: Václav Vojtěch Tureček, 1789.

16mo in 8's. 110 x 80 mm. A-Z, Aa-Ff8 (lacking title-page A1, S3-8, Dd-Ff8) = 209 ff. Text in Bohemian / Czech. It contains 65(!) in-text woodcuts measuring an average of approx. 43 x 67 mm. Bound in contemporary Bohemian dark calf. Armorial bookplate of I.G. Schorsch on front pastedown.

A rare Czech liturgical book printed in an obscure Bohemian town. This volume, while worn and partially incomplete, is unsophisticated and offers the firsthand study of provincial Bohemian book arts which remain little known outside the Czech Republic: there are 65 woodcuts herein, none of which are repeated (!); furthermore, the binding structure is completely visible. The woodcuts are unsigned (though the online Encyklopedie knihy suggests that the printer, Vaclav, may have been personally responsible) and certainly warrant further study.

The printer of our text, Václav Vojtěch Tureček (d. 1822), founded an important printing house in the middle of nowhere: Litomyšl, located about 100 miles to the east of Prague. Trained as a printer from 1771–2 in Kutná Hora, Vaclav moved to Litomyšl in 1775 and built his own printing house, which he operated for most of the rest of his life; he was succeeded by his son Jan Josef Tureček (d. 1836) who also produced traditional but still popular prayer books, religious writings, and folk literature.

Early books printed in Litomyšl are almost impossible to obtain on the market, and it's even more rare to find such a book properly described. We have compared our 1789 edition with a much later 1812 digital surrogate at the National Library of Austria: it would appear that the woodcuts were still in use after 23 years (!). Of our edition, the Databáze Národní Knihovny locates just one copy in the Czech Republic, at the National Library (Prague), to which KVK adds no others.

The text itself is a Czech liturgical calendar for personal use, according to the Roman Missals of Pope Clement VIII and Pope Urban VIII, beginning with Advent and including various feast days and other holy days.

Provenance: from the distinguished library of Irvin and Anita Schorsch (most bear the armorial bookplate of the Bibliotheque Schorsch) which was dispersed in 2016. The collectors were both sophisticated and eclectic (their so-called "farmhouse" in Meadowbrook, PA was described as a "mini Winterthur"). Charles Hummel, curator emeritus of the Winterthur, remarked that the Schorsch library contained "the best privately owned collection of emblem books in the United States," of which our teaching collection formed just one part.

Cataloguer's note: in our copy the woodcuts appear on A3a, A4b, A6a, B1a, C1a, C2b, C4a, C5b, C7b, D1b, D3b, D5a, D6b, D8b, E2a, E5b, E8a, F3b, F5a, F7a, G1b, G3b, G5b, H1a, H8b, J8a, L1a, L3a, M1b, M3a, M4b, M7b, N1b, N3a, N5a, N6b, N8a, O4b, O6a, O8a, P2a, P3a, P4b, P6b, P8a, Q1b, Q3a, Q5a, Q6b, Q8b, R2a, R3b, R5a, R7a, R8b, S2a, T1b, T3b, T5a, T6b, T8b, V2a, V4a, V5b, and V7a.

In this episode, NYPL's Tal Nadan spoke about the Horn & Hardart Automat with Lisa Hurwitz, director of the documentary film The Automat, and Alec Shuldiner, Lisa's collaborator and author of a 2001 dissertation on the subject. These coin-operated eateries were once ubiquitous in New York and Philadelphia, and their rich history is documented in NYPL's Robert F. Byrnes collection of automat memorabilia as well as many other archives explored by these researchers. During the program, the three speakers discussed how the dissertation led to the film and the very different processes and challenges entailed in creating these two formats of scholarship.

Episode Recording and Transcript

A transcript of this event is available here.

Related Resources

• Website for Lisa's documentary film, The Automat

• Alec's dissertation, Trapped behind the Automat: Technological systems and the American restaurant, 1902-1991

  • Dissertation abstracts can be read via the database Proquest Dissertations and Theses, available at any NYPL library or while connected to Library wifi.  Full dissertations can be requested through your local interlibrary loan service.  More details on NYPL's interlibrary loan service can be found here.

• Guide and digitized images for the Robert F. Byrnes collection of automat memorabilia, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

• "Before the Big Mac: Horn & Hardart Automats," a blog post written by Valerie Wingfield, processing archivist for the Byrnes collection

• Online component for NYPL's Lunch Hour NYC exhibition

• NYPL's What's on the Menu? Project, including a Horn & Hardart menu from 1940

About the Work/Cited Series

Work/Cited is a program series that showcases the latest scholarship supported by the rich collections of The New York Public Library with a behind-the-scenes look at how the finished product was inspired, researched, and created. Catch up on previous episodes on the NYPL blog, where videos and links to related resources are posted shortly after each program. Sign up for NYPL's Research Newsletter or view the events calendar to hear about future programs as they are announced.

The New York Public Library holds an exceptional collection of visual materials, including photographs from pre-revolutionary Russia. In 1921, the Library acquired the archive of  George F. Kennan (1845-1924) who traveled extensively in Siberia. An album of photographs of the penal colony of Sakhalin has captions written in a hand very similar to Kennan’s. It is called Sakhalin, the Island of Exile: Photograph Collection of the Russian Island Penal Colony during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. According to William C. Brumfield, 129 mounted photographs depict "administrative buildings, churches, local ethnic types, prisoners (some mention crimes, punishments), and convicts at work." Photos were numbered in no particular order, with English captions, with some corrections by a person (the photographer?) who was present during the photography and thus knew the subject matter/sites. Photos were presumably taken around the time of Anton Chekhov’s trip to Sakhalin who subsequently described it in his famous work Ostrov Sakhalin: iz putevykh zapisok (1895), later also published in English-language translations. These photos constitute remarkable materials from one of Russia’s most notorious penal colonies which at that time had a population of some 10,000 convicts and exiles and smaller numbers of indigenous Gilyak and Ainu.

The newly acquired album, Sakhalin photograph album, between circa 1885 and circa 1905 includes 108 original gelatin silver photographs of Sakhalin showing tsarist prisons, executioners and prisoners, post Alexandrovsky, post Korsakovsky, villages and settlements in Northern and Southern Sakhalin, early oil enterprises, Japanese fishing boats and fisheries, Japanese Consulate, Nivkh, Ainu, Tungus, and Orok People. One photo (“Gilyak summer yurt”) is signed “Фонъ Фрикенъ” (“Fon Fricken”) in negative. All but one photo include period ink captions in Russian on the mounts. 

Below is a description of this album provided by the seller, Bookvica.

An extraordinary and historically important collection of rare original photos of the Sakhalin Island at the peak of its use as a Russian Imperial penal colony and place of exile for criminals and political prisoners. The Sakhalin katorga (servitude) system, largely based on the model of Australian penal colonies, operated in 1869-1906. Over this period, more than 30,000 inmates and exiles, including women, went through the system. Severe corporal punishments, such as flogging, shackles, and enchaining to wheelbarrows for several years, as well as executions, were widely practiced. After the completion of their term, the prisoners had to stay on Sakhalin as free settlers in the newly founded villages scattered across the island. By the end of the 19th-century, there were seven prisons on Sakhalin (Due, Alexandrovskaya, Korsakovskaya, Rykovskaya, Onorskaya, Derbinskaya, Voyevodskaya). The island and its katorga became famous after the publication of travel accounts by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Ostrov Sakhalin, 1895) and publicist Vlas Doroshevich (Sakhalin, 1902, in 2 parts). After Russia’s loss in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05), southern Sakhalin became Japanese territory. The majority of the Russian population had to move, and south Sakhalin prisons closed. Sakhalin katorga officially ceased to exist in 1906, and the only working prison remained in Alexandrovsk.

Our album presents a rare detailed picture of Sakhalin in the early 20th century, showing prisons and exile settlements, prosecutors and prisoners, principal towns, fishing and oil extracting enterprises, ethnographical views, and portraits of the native people. The photographer was most likely Alexey von Fricken / Алексей Александрович фон Фрикен, a government inspector of agriculture on Sakhalin in 1888-1905 and the supervisor of the Sakhalin meteorological stations in 1889–92. Von Fricken was actively involved in the Sakhalin charity activities, published several articles in the “Sakhalin calendar” in 1896–97, helped to establish a local museum, and took part in the 1897 state census. He was also an amateur photographer and opened a studio in Alexandrovsk. During Chekhov’s visit to Sakhalin in 1890, von Fricken often accompanied him on trips and excursions and took a famous group portrait, featuring the writer and the Japanese consul near post Korsakovsky in southern Sakhalin.

The largest group of photos in the album—thirty—depict the Sakhalin katorga system. They include four explicit scenes of a prisoner’s execution (reading out the death sentence, putting the prisoner on the scaffold, hanging, taking the body off the gallows), and a horrifying photo of a body scarred after a flogging 17 years prior. There are also two portraits of famous Sakhalin executioners Golynsky and Komelev—both had long passages devoted to them by Doroshevich (“Sakhalin,” chapter “Palachi” [“Executioners”]), and a rare portrait of famous murderer Fedor Shirokolobov (1851–after 1899), sentenced to be attached to a wheelbarrow for ten years. The other portraits depict a prison trader, a group of prisoners sentenced to death for escape and the murder of guards, and a prisoner with half of his head being shaved to get the traditional look of a convict. Several photos show various facilities of the prison in post Alexandrovsky (jail for inmates with good behavior, punishment cells, the interior of the prison hospital, fire of the prison banya/bathhouse). There are also several portraits and scenes with prisoners—dragging a cart with flour sacks to the prison warehouse, employed in a shoe workshop, delivering wood, waiting near the warehouse to get working tools, fixing a road, quarreling over a card game, dragging logs on special carts to post Alexandrovsky, etc. The other “prison-themed” photos show post-Due taken from the sea, Vladimirsky coal mine, prison watermill in the Tymovsky district, the interior of the Onorskaya prison (apparently decorated for Christmas), prison mill in Vladimirovka village (Korsakovsky district), and a group portrait of “Chinese naval cadets exiled for the attempt of the explosion of gun powder warehouse in Port Arthur in 1900.”

Sixteen photos show post-Alexandrovsky, Sakhalin’s administrative center at the time. Among them are two views of the main street, images of the school, the house of the Alexandrovsky district’s head, the Bazarnaya square (general view and a view of the maidans/market stalls), the meteorological station and the police department, Bolshaya Alexandrovka River (two views, the second one featuring the prison warehouses), Alexandrovsky wharf in winter (two views, one featuring a well-dressed woman, likely the photographers’ acquaintance or relative), post and telegraph office in winter with dog sleds waiting for the post cargo, scenes of “arrival of the winter post to Alexandrovsky” (featuring the post office on the right, the whale skeleton next to the museum on the left and St. Nicholas chapel in the center), etc.

Sixteen photos show various locations in northern Sakhalin—Cape Zhonkier and Three Brothers rocks (including the new lighthouse at Cape Zhonkier built in 1897), a view from the Pilenga mountain range, Krasny Yar village (founded in 1889 in the Alexandrovsky district), Khamdasa the 1st village (founded in 1891 in the Tymovsky district), Khamdasa the 2nd village (founded in 1892 in the Tymovsky district), three views of the Onor village (founded in 1892, in the Tymovsky district) featuring the local church, fisheries on the Poronai River, forest fire on the Amurdan pass, “typical flora of the Tymovsky district,” etc. Two photos show the emerging oil industry on Sakhalin—“dugout house of oil prospector Kleie” and “oil lakes of northern Sakhalin.” German engineer F. Kleie started extracting oil in northern Sakhalin in 1898. Having obtained Russian citizenship, he founded a company that drilled for oil near Nurovo and Boatasino; the company operated in 1908—1914.

Twenty-four photos show southern Sakhalin. There are several views of various settlements and views in the Bay of Patience—Post Tikhmenevsky (Poronaysk since 1945), “Mogun-Kotan” village (Korsakovsky district), Mogun-Kotan River (Pugachyovka River since 1947), Ainu yurts in the Manue village, “Seraroko” village (Korsakovsky district), “Kresty” village, (founded in 1885, Korsakovsky district), Bereznyaki village (founded in 1886), Naibuchi village on the Naiba River (Korsakovsky district), Ainu village “Naiero,” etc. The other photos show Post Korsakovsky (double-page panorama, Japanese consulate, main street), and various settlements in the Aniva Bay—Savina Pad village, “fisheries of Kramarenko in Savina Pad, Korsakovsky district”; “ice storage of Kramarenko company in Pervaya Pad, Aniva Bay,” interior of Kramarenko’s ice storage in Pervaya Pad, etc. Several photos show Japanese fishing vessels and fisheries in southern Sakhalin—Japanese junks in the mouth of the Poronay River, Japanese kungas (a small sailing vessel) in the Bay of Patience, fisheries of Japanese “Ochiyama Kochitta” and “Nisimura,” “herring pomace workshop of Japanese “So-San,” drying herring pomace,” etc.

The album opens with 22 photos of the indigenous people of Sakhalin—Gilyak (Nivkh), Ainu, Tungus and Orok. There are studio portraits of men, women, and families, and views of a “Gilyak summer yurt,” a construction for drying fish, a cage for bear caught for a “religious fest,” “Gilyak cemetery,” two scenes of a ritual bear killing by Nivkh and Ainu people, Nivkh boats, Nivkh making fire, Orok and Ainy yurts, a portrait of a “Tungus missionary,” and a view of the Sochigar village on the Poronay River in the southern Sakhalin where Ainy, Nivkh and Orok fishermen lived side by side.
Seven photos from the album illustrated the book of Nikolay Lobas about Sakhalin’s katorga and penitentiary system (Katorga i poseleniye na ostrove Sakhaline, Pavlograd, 1903), namely: “Post Due” (p. 21), “Quarrel during a card game” (p. 61), “Khamdasa the 2nd village” (p. 96), “Mogun-Kotan village” (p. 114), “Post Tikhmenevsky” (p. 149), “Bereznyaki village” (p. 154), “Savina Pad village” (p. 158). Nikolay Lobas (1858– after 1917) worked on Sakhalin as a doctor in 1892–1899 and was closely involved in charity work on the island. In 1913 he published a monograph about the psychology of murderers based on his observations made in Sakhalin (Ybuytsy: Nekotorye cherty psikhofiziki prestupnikov, M., 1913).

Overall a unique, extensive collection of rare original photos showing Sakhalin and its penitentiary system in the early 20th century. Although the presentation inscription is mostly removed, its remnants allow us to suggest that the album was compiled for Ivan Alexandrovich Krasnov, whose photographs of Sakhalin are now stored in the “Historical and Literary Museum Chekhov and Sakhalin” in Alexandrovsk, Sakhalin (https://www.wdl.org/ru/item/20094/).

This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Thomas Ort is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Queens College, The City University of New York. The main focus of his research has been modernist and avant-garde life in early twentieth-century Czechoslovakia, but his most recent work concerns the politics of memory in postwar Eastern Europe. His new book project, "The Afterlife of a Death: Meaning, Memory, and the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich", explores the ever-evolving interpretations of the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS general and architect of the Final Solution who was assassinated in Prague in 1942.

What research are you working on?

I am working on a new book project, tentatively entitled "The Afterlife of a Death: Meaning, Memory, and the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich". The project concerns the May 1942 assassination in Prague of Reinhard Heydrich, the second highest-ranking official of the Nazi SS, one of the principal architects of the Final Solution, and the governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the statelet established by the Nazis after the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. His killing was one of the boldest acts of resistance in World War II, but also one of the most controversial in that it precipitated horrific mass reprisals and decimated the Czech resistance movement. "The Afterlife of a Death" explores the curious transformation in the Czech lands of the memory of the killing of Heydrich. Whereas in 1942 and for years thereafter the assassination was widely understood as a reckless and ill-conceived endeavor, by the 1990s it came to be celebrated as the single most important act of Czech resistance. The book traces the shifts in its interpretation under Nazi, Communist, and liberal democratic rule, suggesting that what is commonly termed “memory” is better understood as a social framework of meaning. 

What brought you to the Library?

I received an NEH fellowship for the academic year 2021–22 to work on this project. While I do need to travel to Prague to access materials unavailable elsewhere, I’m incredibly fortunate to have the resources of NYPL at my disposal. As anyone who works on Russia or Eastern Europe knows, the Library has one of the most astonishing Slavic collections in the world. The resources available to the researcher here have only been improved through the creation of the Shared Collection with Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia. NYPL is now without question one of the premier institutions for research on the Slavic world.

When and how did you first get the idea for your research project?

This project has been very long in the making. I started working on it in the mid-1990s when I was a Ph.D. student in History at NYU. It began as a research paper for a class on the memory of the Second World War taught by the late Tony Judt while he was writing his magnum opus, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. I did most of the research for that paper at NYPL!

But the idea for the project goes back even further to a conversation I had with an uncle of mine in Prague in late 1990 or early 1991. We were talking about the assassination, and I was telling him what a great and remarkable event I thought it was. He responded with an almost diametrically opposed point of view, full of venom for Edvard Beneš, the president of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London, and the man who ordered Heydrich’s killing. I was absolutely floored by my uncle’s attitude. The sharp differences in our perceptions forced me to question my own assumptions and contemplate the ways in which time, lived experience, and context shape historical understanding. I began to wonder how it was that I had acquired my heroic view while he had come to his vastly more critical perspective. The project really originated in those questions, and I’ve been wanting to work through them for a very long time.

What research tools could you not live without?

I love NYPL’s new Research Catalog which allows me to search for items throughout the Recap Consortium and order them to my reading room with just a few clicks. But I admit that I’m also a sucker for WorldCat. That’s a truly remarkable research tool. I’m likewise a fan of the CUNY OneSearch library catalog, which allows me to simultaneously search the multitude of libraries in the CUNY system and order the books to my home library at Queens College.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

I’ve made a lot of great finds but the ones that stand out relate to the destruction of the village of Lidice in 1942. In retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich, the Nazis massacred the male population of the town, sent the women and children to concentration camps, and then leveled the town to the ground. The Library has in its collection a copy of the postwar Czechoslovak government investigation into the destruction of the village, published by the Ministry of Interior in 1947. Another remarkable find was a volume of unique photographs from the first postwar commemoration of Lidice in June 1945. I believe this item was produced for members of the diplomatic corps in Prague who attended the commemoration. It was gifted to Princeton in 1947, probably by the American diplomat to whom it was given in 1945. But now I’m looking at it from the comfort of the Shoichi Noma Reading Room!

 On February 3, 2022, Doc Chat kicked off another great season by digging into the story of a never-built NYC bridge and the origins of the city's preservation movement. 

A weekly seriesfrom NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-Two,NYPL curators Ian Fowler and Julie Golia examined maps proposing the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Bridge, a development project that would have decimated the built environments of downtown Manhattan and South Brooklyn, and that helped spark the city's modern preservation movement.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Forty-Two: Primary Sources

In addition to the map above, Ian and Julie examined the following:

Both maps are from the Robert Moses papers, held in the Library’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division. 

This document is from the Albert Sprague Bard papers, held in the Library’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division.

Edwin McDowell, “Moses Files Are Opened,” The New York Times, November 4, 1987, C27.

Episode Forty-Two: Readings and Resources

Hillary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, eds., Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007).

“The Brooklyn Battery Bridge,” New York Preservation Archives Project.

Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage Books, 1975). 

Anthony Flint, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City (Random House, 2009).

Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Nation Books, 2010). Also in e-book format.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities(Vintage Books, 1963).

Stuart Marques, “The Brooklyn Battery Bridge,” New York City Department of Records blog, September 27, 2019.  

Suleiman Osman, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York (Oxford University Press, 2011). Also in e-book format.

Kara Schlichting, New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Also in e-book format.

Mason Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (W.W. Norton & Co., 2013). 

“The My Day Project,” The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University. 

Join the Doc Chat Conversation

Doc Chat episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar,  and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Doc Chat Channel of NYPL's blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!

In this episode, NYPL's Elizabeth Cronin spoke with writer Lydia Pyne about her book Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network. So much more than notes that say, “Wish you were here!,” postcards are fundamentally about creating personal connections easily and inexpensively: links between people, places, and beliefs. Elizabeth and Lydia discussed how these personal connections can be traced within the Library's beloved Picture Collection.

Episode Recording and Transcript

Work/Cited Episode 13: The Interconnected World of Postcards from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.

A transcript of this event is available here.

Related Resources

• Website for the author Lydia Pyne: http://www.pynecone.org/

• The Photography Collection’s Detroit Publishing Company Postcards

• The Picture Collection’s digitized postcards

There is a vast amount on postcards, much of it devoted to postcards of specific countries or places. Here are a few related books that deal with the history of postcards:

• Cure, Monica. Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

• Fürst, Thomas Michael. Picture Postcards - A Bibliography: Supplemented by a History of Deltiology. Schwamtal, Germany: Phil Creativ, 2016.

• Prochaska, David and Jordana Mendelson, eds. Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2010.

About the Work/Cited Series

Work/Cited is a program series that showcases the latest scholarship supported by the rich collections of The New York Public Library with a behind-the-scenes look at how the finished product was inspired, researched, and created. Catch up on previous episodes on the NYPL blog, where videos and links to related resources are posted shortly after each program. Sign up for NYPL's Research Newsletter or view the events calendar to hear about future programs as they are announced.