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A rare illustrated German nursery rhyme children’s book, Paradisefibel features colored illustrations by Richard Seewald (1889-1976), a German visual artist. With highly stylized illustrations, this fairy tale includes humorous animals in human situations, such as singing frogs and playing monkeys. Written by husband and wife Joseph and Maria Koch, the rhythmic flow of the text works in conjunction with Koch’s development of the “finger-reading” method of sign language.

A Collection of Alphabets Dedicated to Artists is a small pattern book of decorative and ornamented typefaces for alphabets and numbers. Containing variations of common Roman, Gothic, and Italian letter forms, it offers letters of the alphabet formed by human figures, silhouettes of human figures, and animals. Interestingly, it also has a page of the letters formed by hands in sign language alphabet.

This book is a compilation of prints of covers (or envelopes) and postcards from the California Gold Rush featuring detailed information about each illustration. It portrays the adventure involved in prospecting for gold. Mining expert Kenneth Kutz begins his story with the discovery of gold in California and explores the connection between the gold rush and philately. Then he discusses mining law. Finally, he presents the reader with 20 years of correspondence to and from people working in the gold fields, beginning with the initial discovery of gold in 1848.

This book is a large-font reprint of the 1938 original. It was written by Columbia University graduate, mining expert, and California historian Ernest Abram Wiltsee, who was a collector of covers. (A cover is the name stamp collectors have given to what most people call envelopes.) The original limited-edition of this seminal work was only 500 copies; this copy plays an important and unusual role in the field of United States postal history.

The Hampton Album elegantly depicts the industrial and agricultural skills that were taught to students at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton Institute in 1930, and finally Hampton University in 1984), the historically black school founded in Virginia in 1868 to educate freed slaves. The original images in this album were part of a series of photographs compiled by W.E.B Du Bois for the exhibition of African American life featured at the sensational world’s fair, the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Kunstöffner is a kit designed to encourage a young person’s appreciation of art through objects in the collection at the Kunsthaus Zürich, one of the most significant art collections in Switzerland.

This fascinating biography of celebrated linguist, Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890-1972), appropriately written by a linguistics professor, features eight plates of black and white photos of Dr. Turner and his family from different stages of his life. The author, Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis, was Director of the Linguistics Program at SUNY New Paltz and was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in linguistics from NYU. Dr. Turner’s widow, Lois Turner Williams, contributed the introduction to the book. A Harvard graduate, Dr.