While cleaning up the bookshop, Ken unearths a creepy little piece of Cold War-era ephemera: a $.05 pamphlet entitled Should an A-Bomb Fall. Published by the Offices of Civil Defense in 1951, it's full of advice for surviving a nuclear explosion such as, “Go under your desk,” “Don’t look directly at the explosion,” and, “If you are at least 18 blocks away you’ll be completely fine.” These hints seem distinctly unhelpful to us today, and may lead us to suspect that the primary purpose of this pamphlet was not to save lives but to reassure the American public that a nuclear war with Russia wouldn’t have been the end of the world. We’ll talk about this and other cultural expressions of Cold War anxieties on today’s episode.
Brattlecast #123 - Who is Jimmy Cagney?
Remember Jimmy Cagney? Of course some do, but it’s fewer and fewer people every year. For those of you who don’t remember, Cagney was one of the biggest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, who won acclaim for his performances in films like White Heat, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and The Public Enemy. Even fewer people remember him as a talented amateur painter, but in his autobiography he claimed that he might have been happier as a painter than as a movie star. We have one of his paintings in the studio with us today, a floral still life that usually hangs in Ken’s office. We’ll use it as a jumping off point into a sprawling conversation about the way that fashions in collecting change over time. Interest in Jimmy Cagney and his show business contemporaries is slowly fading away, while, for example, among younger collectors a new interest in 19th century women writers is blossoming.
Brattlecast #122 - Ken's Amazing Notes
A fun grab-bag episode of some of Ken’s favorite stories to tell at lectures and on chat shows. Topics include the JFK assassination, a J. D. Salinger sighting, a narrowly missed Red Sox milestone, and more. Speaking of lectures, we’re delighted to be scheduling live events again. If you’d like to have an item appraised and hear these and other stories in person, you can catch Ken at one of his upcoming speaking engagements throughout New England. View the full lineup here: https://www.brattlebookshop.com/events.
Brattlecast #121 - The Shakespeare Pages
In 2020 a complete copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio sold at auction for almost 10 million dollars, a world-record price for any work of literature. Unfortunately we do not have that First Folio in the studio with us today, but we do have one single, original page from each of the Four Folios; a little Shakespearean variety pack. These pages were collected from defective copies of the Folios and assembled into a leaf book, with an original introductory essay by Edwin Elliott Willoughby. Only 73 of these leaf books were published by the Grabhorn Press in 1935. In this episode we’ll talk about these particular four pages, leaf books in general, and the persistent mysteries surrounding Shakespeare’s life and works.
Brattlecast #120 - The Limited Editions Club
Today we’re talking about some of our favorite titles from the Limited Editions Club. Founded in 1929 by George Macy, the L.E.C. brought together leading artists, illustrators, book designers, and typographers to produce beautiful editions of classic works of literature, which were then distributed to club members on a subscription basis. Only about 1,500 copies of each title was published, and they were usually signed by their author, illustrator, or both. While many of their titles have fallen out of fashion today, some are still highly collectible; James Joyce’s Ulysses, with art by Henri Matisse (who hadn’t read a word of the book and instead illustrated six scenes from Homer’s Odyssey), and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland signed by Alice Hargreaves, the “original” Alice for whom the book was written.
Speaking of subscription-based media, we would encourage you to subscribe to the Brattlecast if you haven’t already, and to share so that your friends can join the club!