Category Archives: History

It’s always nineteen eighty-four somewhere

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

George Orwell’s seminal novel turns seventy-five this week. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell posed a frightening question: could people be conditioned to actually believe (rather than just pretend to believe) the lies they are told ? Here we are 75 years later … Continue reading →

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Collecting Memories

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I’m hoping to get to see the manuscript treasures including Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten draft of the Gettysburg Address, a map from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and lyrics from The Sound of Music are among more than 120 items in the new Library … Continue reading →

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War is not an adventure…

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

“War is not an adventure. It is a disease.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Doing it old school

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I’ve shared stories about the beloved Arion Press, including a visit to their San Francisco home by Anthony Bourdain in 2015 for a online series called Raw Craft . I recently spotted  a video from Business Insider’s Still Standing series … Continue reading →

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Cover Art

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

One of the privileges in collecting and selling antiquarian books is discovering the absolutely wonderful book cover art and design from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although my specialty has always been books on travel, geography, and history, I … Continue reading →

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After 140 years it’s finished (almost)

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I’ve visited hundreds of Roman Catholic cathedrals, basilicas, chapels, and churches in Europe, but Sagrada Familia in Barcelona isn’t just any old church; it’s an extraordinary edifice with a remarkable history. It also has a fantastic design, complete with soaring … Continue reading →

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A Series of Headaches

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

A Series of Headaches is a marvelous video from the London Review of Books documenting letterpress printer Nick Hand as he prints a page from the magazine using methods as close as he can get to those used to print … Continue reading →

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Dracula Returns (daily)

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Dracula Daily Returning May 3 You may remember DraculaDaily, which has been an annual paean to the beloved Gothic vampire classic first published in 1897. The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker unfolds over the course of six months, from May … Continue reading →

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When in Rome

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

When I visited Rome for the first time more than four decades ago, I quite randomly chose to pop in at the Museo della Civiltà Romana to see the massive model of the ancient city. The archaeologist and architect Italo Gismondi … Continue reading →

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Biblio Trivia

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

  1. The rarest book in the world is a 1593 first edition of Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare. The Bodleian’s copy “is the only known copy of this book in existence.” 2. The first book ordered on Amazon was a scientific tome called Fluid Concepts … Continue reading →

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