1920s

This beautiful book of pressed flowers was compiled by newlyweds Ralph L. and Hetty G. Dixon, who collected the majority of the specimens along the banks of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Towpath in Georgetown in the 1920s. Although the Dixons were amateurs, they took great care in the mounting and identification of their blooms, and it is thanks to this that most of the specimens remain intact. But the love story contained within these pages isn’t the only golden thing about the book; the locally collected flowers include golden corydalis and golden ragwort.

Gather out of Star-Dust: A Harlem Renaissance Album is a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance, a period of tremendous artistic and cultural achievement among African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, with New York City's Harlem neighborhood at its epicenter. The book is also based on a current exhibit of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Yale University.

Did you know that there is a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s epic pirate adventure Treasure Island? It’s true! Porto Bello Gold, by prolific pulp fiction writer Arthur D. Howden Smith, tells how the treasure got to Treasure Island, complete with Billy Bones, Captain Flint, and, of course, Long John Silver. Despite some kitschy chapter titles, such as “Fetch Aft the Rum, Darby McGraw” and “The One-Legged Man and the Irish Maid,” Porto Bello Gold is more than just Roaring Twenties fan fiction.

This book traces the life and legacy of Charlie Wiggins, the “Negro Speed King.” Many people do not know that there were African American heroes on the race track. Charlie Wiggins was a four-time champion (1926, 1929, 1931, and 1932) of the Gold and Glory auto race in Indiana. Due to segregation and persecution in the 1920s, African American auto racers formed the Colored Speedway Association. They were attacked by the Klu Klux Klan, which owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.