Smithsonian Libraries

New July Acquisitions!

Check out these new acquisitions at the National Museum of American History Library!

You’ll never look at barbecue the same after reading Savage Barbecue: race, culture, and the invention of America’s first food.  However, it is meant in a good, feed-your-mind way.  As guessed from its self-explanatory title, this book examines the racial and cultural context throughout barbecue’s history from when Columbus first arrived in the Americas to the early 20^th century.  Illustrations pertaining to barbecue throughout the centuries are also featured through the book.

Warnes, Andrew. Savage Barbecue: race, culture, and the invention of America’s first food. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Harper's Weekly, 1864, General Grant receiving his commission as Lieutenant-General from President Lincoln

Think you know everything about Abraham Lincoln?  Think again.  Known for being the 16^th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln is little known for being an inventor.  In , Lincoln the Inventor, Lincoln’s mechanical inclinations throughout his life are examined and the complete story behind Lincoln’s patented invention, “a device to buoy vessels over shoals,” is revealed. Also contained within this book are appendixes featuring reprints Lincoln’s patent papers and drafts of his first and second lectures on discoveries and inventions.  Incidentally, Lincoln’s Patent Model is featured in the exhibit Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life at the National Museum of American History.

Emerson, Jason. Lincoln the Inventor. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009.

Continue to nourish your mind with some Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage.  This book features fifty-six in-depth scholarly chapters focusing on the history of chocolate’s — and cacao’s — mostly in the Americas and a small amount in Europe and Asia from pre-Columbian to Civil War eras.  As explored in these chapters, chocolate is present in many historical aspects of culture, faith, and every-day life such as business, education, and medicine.  If you’re craving for more chocolate-related scholarship and feel inspired, the fifty-sixth chapter gives suggestions for further potential research areas in chocolate. Yum.

Grivetti, Louis. Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2009.

Interested in transportation-related history after seeing the America on the Move exhibit at the National Museum of American History? Check out Eat my dust: early women motorists before it speeds away. Learn about women’s history through personal stories of women from the United States, Britain, and Australia during the early days of motoring—think 1880s—until 1930s. By pursuing their love of cars, these women challenged societal norms and paved progress for women. An included “Essay on Sources” gives a wonderful source of its own for further readings about women and transportation.

Clarsen, Georgine.  Eat my dust: early women motorists. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

—by Mary Jinglewski

Libraries Products Now Available on CafePress.com!

In June, the Smithsonian Enterprises Product Development and Licensing team launched the first official Smithsonian store on CafePress.com.

If you're not familiar with Cafe Press, it's an online shop that sells user-generated products such as t-shirts, mugs, notebooks and much more.

Among the debut collections in the Smithsonian's store is a selection of seed catalog art from the Libraries' very own trade literature collection in the National Museum of American History Library. You can buy a variety of products featuring our popular catalog covers, including this totebag decorated with a quaint Peter Henderson & Co illustration:

You can even purchase merchandise with the Smithsonian Libraries logo! How about sporting your Libraries pride with a trendy Sigg waterbottle?

Check out the entire line of Smithsonian wares at Cafe Press! The Libraries receives a portion of the proceeds from all items featuring our images.—Erin Clements Rushing

(Product images courtesy of Cafepress.com)

New Astronomy 400 Years Later at the Dibner Library

In terms of astronomy, things were never the same after the year 1609. Galileo Galilei got his hands on a telescope and made his watershed observations, which challenged views of the arrangement of the universe and the nature of matter. Johannes Kepler published Astronomia nova—two mathematical laws that describe the motion of planets around the sun.

All of these achievements and more are on display at the Dibner Library temporary exhibit, New Astronomy 400 Years Later to commemorate their 400th year anniversary. Featured here are books, manuscripts and images of the works of Nicholas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei. Peggy Kidwell, the National Museum of American History Curator of Mathematics, put together this exhibit which runs until July 24th.

Don't have time to make it to the Library (even though you should make the time)? You can access many of these and other works via our Galaxy of Images digital collection. Look inside the works of Kepler, Galilei, Brahe and others. If your astronomy needs still have not been satiated, the Heralds of Science collection on astronomy has even more resources for you.—Brett Lambert

Top: Portrait of Galileo Galilei, which hangs over the exhibit

Left: New Astronomy 400 Years Later at the Dibner Library

Below: Kepler, Johannes, Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine tables), Ulm, 1627

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind—Neil Armstrong

Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius Magna, Longeque Admirabilia Spectacula Pandens, Suspiciendaque Proponens Unicuique [The great starry messenger], 1610, f10 verso, two moons

On July 20, 1969, two members of the Apollo 11 crew, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, took their first steps on the moon, while America and the world watched, enthralled.—Elizabeth Periale

Image from Heralds of Science

In 1955 Bern Dibner, the noted science book collector and founder of the Burndy Library, published Heralds of Science as Represented by Two Hundred Epochal Books and Pamphlets Selected from the Burndy Library.