Tuesday, September 28 - 7:30 p.m. Discovering the Great Divorce by Ilyon Woo In 1814, Eunice Chapman's estranged husband stole away her three children and took them to live among the Shakers. At a time when wives and mothers had few rights to speak of, Eunice Chapman waged a colossal campaign for her children's ...
Many of us begin a new academic or fiscal year this week. In the spirit of new beginnings and renewed vows of organization, AAS has added an RSS feed to our website. Those who have visited the AAS website recently have no doubt noticed how much content has been added, events promoted, books published, etc. ...
The following conundrum for Past is Present readers comes from AAS reader Mary Fissell. I’m writing a book about Aristotle's Masterpiece, and have just spent a couple of very productive and happy weeks working with the AAS’s collection of 50+ editions. This book, neither by Aristotle, nor a masterpiece, is one of the longest-running popular medical ...
The following post comes to us from AAS reader Peter MacInerney. Early in January 1855, a Concord-based free-lance writer, occasional surveyor, and sometime lecturer, visited the American Antiquarian Society at its then-new building. This second Antiquarian Hall had been completed little more than one year before, after the Society outgrew its original building. The visitor recounted ...
An earlier post about bibliographies on everything from the California Gold Rush to tomatoes got me wondering about the impetus behind that heady experience (the Gold Rush, not the tomatoes). How did a man who heard all the fairy-tale stories of incredible wealth just waiting to be picked out of the rivers make the difficult ...
NPR had a piece this morning on an exhibit that just opened at the Smithsonian called Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. If you are in the D.C. area, the exhibit is running until January. It sounds like they are making some interesting connections between the American ...
A recent reference question reminded me just how many amazing bibliographies there are, and it also sparked a memory of a wonderful cache of letters in AAS's manuscript collection that give an insider's view of the '49er experience. (The entire Grant-Burr Family Papers are fully transcribed online, including the letters on the California ...
Tomorrow evening, Tuesday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m. Lori D. Ginzberg will be giving a lecture at AAS on "'A very radical proposition': Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Meanings of the Vote." Brilliant, self-righteous, charismatic, intimidating, and charming, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the founding philosopher of the American movement for woman's rights. To many she was ...
Ever wish you could turn common, everyday household objects into gold? Well, now you can! This pitch may sound eerily similar, if in reverse, to the "Cash for Gold" ads flooding our TV airwaves today. In the early modern world, alchemists were the ones pursuing methods to turn common elements into gold. ...
Spring is springing, the bees are buzzing, and we are coming into the busy season here at AAS. Opportunity is knocking. This week AAS will be involved with two wonderful lectures on the lives of African Americans, so it’s a perfect time to tout the wide-range of material we have supporting the study ...
Today you can check out a new issue of Common-place.org, an early American online journal AAS co-sponsors. If you want to understand today’s economic woes, you could do a lot worse than explore hard times in early America. That’s the message in “Hard Times,” the latest edition of Common-place.org, guest edited by ...
If you thought the tension and incivility between political parties in America couldn't get any worse than it has been recently, then you haven't spent enough time with nineteenth century political cartoons. Today I don't think you could get away with publishing an image like "The Philosophic Cock" (in the new fully illustrated online inventory ...
Just a reminder that the best way to escape the dreary weather (besides a tropical vacation) is a relaxing evening with a glass of wine, delicious food, and some good books. If you agree, please join us tonight at the American Antiquarian Society for our annual Adopt-a-Book event beginning at 6pm. ...
Some of the American Antiquarian Society's collection materials have been on our shelves for almost 200 years, but other items are "new" antiquities. New, that is, in the way that hand-me-downs from your older sister are new. They are new to us even if they have existed for hundreds of years elsewhere. The AAS curators ...
All the votes have been counted and the winner is.... Penny! Penny's caption won our hearts and received the most thumbs up in Past is Present's first humorous what-caption-would-you-write contest. Her submission had the added bonus of connecting to the original post on Slate, before the hype by AAS's curator of Graphic Arts, Lauren Hewes. ...
