May Day

It is a fitting day to feature a very curious book in our collection. It is a copy of Jacques Levy's Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa, but one that has been transformed and re-titled "Journal of Protest" by Dr. George Margolis, professor of Pathology at the Dartmouth Medical School from 1963-1982. Margolis chose a book about someone he most admired to collect his own story of protest by pasting the book full of mementos of his fight for social justice.

Margolis was an advocate for diversifying the medical profession by actively recruiting minorities into the field. He also protested the Vietnam War and was co-founder of the New Hampshire chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, but he had a particular attraction to Chavez's movement to organize migrant farm labor.

The book is plastered with letters and news clippings from Margolis's rabble rousing as well as his personal reflections on his successes and failures. It is an odd example of a kind of cultural appropriation. He literally obscures the words of the book with his own memories, but simultaneously pays homage to Chavez--seemingly trying to meld their work into one. But, does his work blot out Chavez's work? Or, does Margolis see Chavez as a power so strong that he can support Margolis's own labors?

To judge for yourself, ask for Rare R707.M37 1993.

The Art of Photography

This last week, Rauner welcomed art history professor Katie Hornstein's History of Photography class for an hour-long romp through some of the most amazing books related to photography. Some of the gems included Gardner's Sketch Book of the Civil War and autographed prints by Margaret Bourke-White that were published in Erskine Caldwell's You Have Seen Their Faces. Another beautiful work that the students explored was Camera Work, a photography journal edited by Alfred Stieglitz that ran from 1903 through 1917.

Alfred Stieglitz is often credited for the eventual acceptance of photography as an legitimate art form in the 20th century. He was also known as a promoter of modern art and ran several New York art galleries and was the husband of artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Shortly after 1902 Stieglitz founded a movement called the Photo-Secession that disavowed all traditional definitions of what constituted a photograph. This included a rejection of the oppressive control that contemporary institutions, galleries, and art schools had over the determination of what could and could not be considered art.

Camera Work was a vehicle for promoting this movement by showcasing the work of the Photo-Secessionists, primarily through high-quality photogravure reproductions of film positives that had been transferred to a copper plate. Stieglitz's insistence on perfection in these reproductions was such that, at least in one instance, the photogravures were hung in a gallery exhibition instead of the actual prints, whose delivery had been delayed.

At Rauner, we are fortunate to have a complete run of Stieglitz's groundbreaking publication. To see more of the stunning photogravures in any of Rauner's fifty volumes (in twenty-four issues), come to the reference desk and ask to see Rare TR1 .C5.

Poetry!

It is national poetry month, so we just put up a small display of some gems from the collection. The two jaw droppers are a manuscript poem by Phillis Wheatley in her immaculate hand, and the mimeograph copy of the Howl that Allen Ginsberg sent to Richard Eberhart. But there are some other amazing things as well: manuscript poems by Frost and Wordsworth, and beautiful printing of Rilke and others. 

Stop by and take a look. The case is just inside the front doors and open to the public.

From Inner Space to Outer Space

When he was a child, Arthur R. Kantrowitz and his younger brother Adrian liked to build things.  Using old radio parts, they constructed an electrocardiograph on the table in their Bronx kitchen in the 1920s. As the brothers grew up their paths diverged. Adrian became a physician and heart surgeon, while Arthur turned to physics and engineering. However, throughout the 1950s and 1960s they continued to collaborate on mechanical inventions that would prolong the life of patients with heart failure, such as the inter-aortic balloon pump (1967) and the left ventricular assist device (1972).

Arthur’s real passion, however, was fluid mechanics, particular the behavior of super-hot gases in confined spaces, which included experiments in nuclear fusion, laser propulsion, magnetohydrodynamics, and supersonic high intensity molecular beams. His invention of the nose cone (“Means for and method of controlling attitude of re-entry vehicle”) for rockets and space vehicles was instrumental in getting both man and machine safely back to earth. Altogether, Kantrowitz held 21 patents including a wide-angle isotope separator, a space vehicle, an axial-flow compressor, and a high-powered laser.

One of his earliest inventions, however, was more tangible. In 1937, Kantrowitz submitted a patent request related to caster wheels, in particular the behavior of shimmy in said wheels. He proposed that by permitting the wheel only to move a limited distance “laterally relative to the axis of the castering spindle…the tire deflection is partially neutralized continually and its interaction with the angular motion can be reduced enough to prevent shimmy."  Kantrowitz felt that this application could be of significant importance when it came to a “castering wheel for aircraft and other vehicles.” The patent was approved in September 1939.

Kantrowitz was a scientists his entire life. He was a chief physicist at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics from 1935-1946, after which he taught physics and engineering at Cornell University until 1956, when he founded the Avco-Everett Laboratory in Everett, Massachusetts, which he ran from 1956-1978. In 1978, after his retirement from Avco, he joined the faculty of the Thayer School of Engineering as a part time professor and senior lecturer.

We recently re-processed Arthur Kantrowitz's papers and looking through them, it is apparent that he never stopped working to improve the life around him. That is probably why, in 1992, he took a look at health care costs, trying to solve a problem that has yet to be solved. Found in a folder entitled “Unfinished calculations,” it seems that he ran out of time. Arthur Kantrowitz died at the age of 95 in 2008, six days after his brother.

You can ask for MS-1097 to see more. As soon as the finding aid is ready, we will post a link here.

Illustrated with a Poem

We seem to be obsessing over photograph books lately. Not sure why, but here is another one! In 1938, while the Depression still raged, the poet Archibald MacLeish made use of the Farm Security Administration's invitation to writers to make creative use of their vast photographic collections. MacLeish produced a poem, but rather than use the photographs to illustrate the poem, he reversed the usual format. On the dust jacket blurb, he writes: "Land of the Free" is the opposite of a book of poems illustrated by photographs. It is a book of photographs illustrated by a poem.

The "poem" is also referred to as a soundtrack, and similarly to how illustrations change the way you read a text, MacLeish's poem alters your vision of the photos.

It is a cool interplay of text and image well worth your time. Come in and ask for Land of the Free, Rare E169.M16.

Cruise of the "Pandora"

We have blogged about William Bradford's mammoth photographic ode to the North, Arctic Regions, in the past. We just found in our collections a book that could be considered its little cousin: Allen Young's Cruise of the "Pandora" from 1876. Like Arctic Regions, it uses actual pasted-in photographs as illustrations. The scope and size is considerably smaller (it contains just twelve photos in a book you you can easily hold in your hand), but it shows the same kind of environmental and cultural tourism Bradford displays.

There are photos of Cape Riley "where the first relics of Franklin's Expedition were found"; a sentimental "last look at the North-West Passage": and the quarter deck of the Pandora after a successful hunt. The book also shares Bradford's awe toward the Arctic. Even though the journey had the dual purpose to complete the Northwest Passage and search for Franklin's lost ships, to Young, the region was a place of wonder and beauty.

To take a look, ask for Stef G665 1875 .Y5.

The Americans

In 1959, as the country began to wake up (again) to its legacy of racism, an artsy photography book by a Swiss-born photographer was issued by Grove Press. It was so unsettling. Robert Frank's masterpiece, The Americans, took a cold, critical look at 1950s America and exposed it in a style evocative of the 1930s Farm Security Administration photographs. It was scorching. Things were supposed to be better now--the Depression was over and we had won the war. But, somehow they weren't.

Jack Kerouac wrote a Beat-inspired introduction that gave the book a counter-culture kick and set Frank up as a poet employing the medium of film and light. What most people didn't realize was that the book of minimally captioned photographs, without text except for Kerouac's short intro, had been released a year earlier in France. The French version contains the same images, but also an extended essay on American history and culture by French poet Alain Bosquet. The essay contextualizes Frank's work and simultaneously uses the images as illustrations. The two books set side by side represent very different aesthetics attempting to do different things for different audiences.

We are now fortunate to have both "firsts" in our collections. Ask for Rare E169.02 .F713 1958 for Les Américains. The Americans will be cataloged soon. Come take a look and see what has changed and what hasn't.