Although we spend a lot of time hunting for treasure in other people’s attics, the Brattle has its own nooks and crannies where we let interesting items pile up for years—ok, sometimes decades. When cleaning out a cubby in the office, Ken unearthed one of these inadvertently hoarded finds: an 1870s Harper’s Magazine from the Alcatraz library. We’ll use it as a jumping off point into a discussion of Alcatraz’s history, its place in popular culture, and prison libraries in general on this escapist new #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #170 - Magazines & Early Cars
Today in the studio we’ve got some beautifully illustrated issues of Collier’s and Harper’s Magazine from the early 1900s. In magazines from this era we start to see the first automobile advertisements pop up, selling hand-crafted and extremely expensive Speedwells or Pope-Hartfords to affluent Gilded-Age readers. After the Model T made driving accessible to the middle class, the car and its infrastructure would reshape American life, but at this time there were few gas stations, no roadside assistance programs, and not so many paved roads. Hop in for a tour of vintage car-culture on this speedy new #brattlecast.