Book Detective

Looking for a reputable antiquarian bookseller in or near Massachusetts to assess and possibly purchase a large library.
Thank you.

General Jack D. Ripper: “Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake …. children's ice cream!”

Breaking the Color Barrier: The U.S. Naval Academy's First Black Midshipmen and the Struggle for Racial Equality Breaking the Color Barrier: The U.S. Naval Academy's First Black Midshipmen and the Struggle for Racial Equality

Someone should see that every midshipman is gifted a copy of this award-winning history. They should be aware of their own legacy — especially during Jim Crow — and living past it.

www.amazon.com/Breaking-Col...

Six Short Thoughts on the Most Insane Trump Story of All Time Trump's "Team of Amateurs" Screwed Up in the Most Hilarious (and Troublesome) Way

I couldn't help but write up some quick thoughts trying to capture the sheer insanity (and illegality!) of that Trump group chat. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/six-short-...

Whew! I feared William Boot had been disappeared on a flight to El Salvador’s megaprison.

A new must-read dispatch.

“This week was marked by stunningly brazen, unquestionably illegal, and unconstitutional assaults on the nation’s historic traditions of due process and free speech…”

So reassuring that Mike Lee is such an independent thinker and well known for avoiding parroting party line propaganda.

🚨🚨🚨 “We aren’t just outside the bounds of normal constitutional operations; we’re several standard deviations outside anything America has ever experienced before. We can clearly see what’s happening is wrong—illegal and unconstitutional—and the actors who can do something about that just … aren’t.”

Specious anthropomorphism in tech reporting has a long and shameful history. In the 1970s there was a widely reported story with no documentation about how computers experienced pain when they were suddenly turned off.

Show Up For Our Libraries! By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Trump administration's Executive Order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer. ALA American Library Association. #ForOurLibraries

🚨NEW🚨: Donald Trump is attempting to strip away federal support for libraries. We will NOT let that happen.

Last night the President signed an order to gut the Institute of Museum & Library Services. But together, we know we can show up & defeat it.

Full EO: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

There were layers of historic irony in the Kennedy Center booing last night. Just look at the concert program. @pablo.show @nicollewallace.bsky.social @esglaude.bsky.social

Shostakovich’s personal struggles while attempting to maintain his artistic integrity under the authoritarian dictatorships of Stalin, et al in the USSR (and the toll it took on him) are now legendary.

Added ironic context re J.D. Vance getting booed at the Kennedy Center: The concert featured Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2 written for David Oistrakh, born in Odessa Ukraine. 1/2

Luckily Jack Weston’s career apparently didn’t endure any setbacks from this public embarrassment a couple of years earlier.

But telling two Goldwater ladies to “go to Hell” in Beverly Hills landed him a $50 fine and lots of bad publicity.

Memories from a more innocent age.

Trump Intent on Transforming U.S. into Pariah State William Boot's latest dispatch

.@vermontgmg.bsky.social Please give us an update on the status of William Boot. I fear his press credentials may have been revoked and he has been expelled from the United States.

The KOOP Radio interview with STARMAN director Robert Stone:
www.lightscameraaustin.net/robert-stone...

The documentary — about NASA engineer, sci-fi novelist, and UT alum Gentry Lee — screens today and Saturday during #SXSW. #Starman #GentryLee #SXSW2025

‘Starman’ Review: An Outer Space Documentary That’s Out of This World Full of extraordinary footage, Robert Stone's blissed-out mind-bender of a movie meditates on the possibilities of life in the universe.

“‘Starman’ reconnects us to [the] original cosmic rapture and wonders … returns us to that moment when the promise of space carried a spiritual thrust. It says that our desire to explore other worlds, and to find life on them, filled a religious hunger in us. But that we all kind of forgot that.”

I quietly note that when a bureaucratic U.S. government agency was pioneering the development of large rocket boosters (with subcontractors) all of the 32 Saturn launches from 1961-1975 were relatively successful; no explosions. (Compare to the USSR’s N1 super heavy-lift launch vehicle.)

Very likely. I found it on Google Books.

Isn’t that an updated version of the joke in John Updike’s COUPLES (1968)?
What three cities in Massachusetts are named for Governor Endicott Peabody (1920-1977): Endicott, Peabody, and Marblehead.

Too bad a framed copy of that photo doesn’t hang in the signage wall of the Dr. Frank Stanton wing of the Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.

Rachel Carson’s Brave and Prescient 1953 Letter Against the Government’s Assault on Science and Nature “The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife… Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politi…

“Apparently [public-spirited citizens’] hard-won progress is to be wiped out, as a politically minded Administration returns us to the dark ages of unrestrained exploitation and destruction.” — Rachel Carson, in 1953 when The Fish and Wildlife Service was targeted for closure.

The latest weekly installment on the Trump/Musk junta, “the greatest voluntary and intentional squandering of global goodwill and friendship in recorded history”… with a fitting and bitter coda noting the regime’s effort to pressure to release Andrew Tate and his brother…

There were a number of telling moments. Especially after aggressively interrupting, talking over Zelenskyy, and shouting a denial that Vance was talking loudly, Trump said:

“No, no, you've done a lot of talking.”

Amusing trivia re the Rockwell Kent logo…

March 1, 1925: Viking Press is formed in New York. The book publishing partnership of Harold Guinzburg and George Oppenheimer, recent college graduates in their 20s, adopts the name as a “symbol of enterprise, adventure and exploration in the publishing field.” 1/2

An added bit of visual irony is the presence of Winston glowering between Vance and Trump yesterday.

The great French actress Catherine Deneuve dedicated the César Awards ceremony to Ukraine,while wearing a Ukrainian flag on her jacket lapel.

Honored and grateful for the outpouring of support for Ukraine across the world, and across different industries!

Yes, the Trump-Vance performance yesterday was a disaster and a danger. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that Trump’s rant about Hunter Biden’s bedroom and bathroom and all things Russiagate was demented, real mad king stuff. Dude is tormented and unable to control himself. Completely nuts.