glitters

This is a thick tabletop book with large print and 100 breathtaking color illustrations and photos of gold miners throughout. The lure of achieving instant wealth with the relatively low equipment cost of prospecting was called "gold fever." The author covers almost four decades, from 1849—just after the first discovery of gold in California—to 1884, when the hydraulic mining companies ceased operations. It also discusses a horrific side effect of the gold rush—the massacre and extermination of Native Americans in California.

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 reprint of the original, so many of the black-and-white images are fuzzy. Nevertheless, it is a very exciting read. Many people assume that the prospectors who participated in the California Gold Rush traveled there overland from the eastern states. But it was actually a worldwide gold rush, with many prospectors traveling by sea. Even prospectors from Maine often traveled by sea. Because the Panama Canal had not yet been built, travelers to California had to sail around Cape Horn.

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.

This 75-page tabletop book is also a stamp album, with spaces to mount commemorative Olympic stamps inside the book. Each page contains a vivid color portrait of an Olympic superstar. With a dedication by the Postmaster General of the United States, the book explains the enduring stamp design process in detail. The United States Olympic commemorative postage stamp issue of 1984 was truly one of a kind.

This 50-page book is copy number 160 of only 500 in a limited-edition printing. Number six of the Pacific History Series, this book's cover features a handsome 1867 image of the wooden side-paddle wheel steamer "China." This ship was manufactured to transport mail across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Japan. One side effect of the California Gold Rush was the increase of California's commercial ties with Asia.

This is a small orange booklet printed in a tiny typeface. Published in 1977 by the chief authority on Nationalist China postage stamps at the time, this catalogue is number 502 of 1000 printed. It contains stamp listings, general philatelic information, postal history, and an index. What makes this volume special? The fact that the author actually came into contact with all of these stamps.

This pocket-sized hardcover book was published in 1946—the 50-year anniversary of rural free delivery by the U.S. postal service. The advent of rural delivery service made a big difference in the lives of farmers. Before rural free delivery, many farmers had to travel long distances to pick up their mail at the nearest post offices, or pay someone else to pick it up for them. This copy was donated by the National Rural Letter Carriers Association 40 years after publication.

This book contains over 250 pages of letters to and from the Postmaster General, along with charts and tables. It documents the work of mail agents who carried mail from the eastern states to California by steamship until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s. Professor Theron Wierenga wrote this book for his students, after his son was born.

This gold-covered book is especially appropriate for the Smithsonian Library's golden anniversary celebration. In the early days of the U.S. postal system, mail traveled to California overland, or by steamship, pony, jackass (pack mule), and railroad. The goal was to connect isolated California with the rest of the United States. At almost four hundred pages in length, this book contains hundreds of black-and-white photos (and a few color plates) of canceled covers—envelopes stamped by the post office so they cannot be reused as fresh postage.

This book traces the history of postal services in the Gold Coast region of Africa (modern-day Ghana) from the European "discovery" of the region in 1471, to the end of the Ashanti War in 1901. The book includes beautiful color illustrations of "cancelled covers" (envelopes) throughout.

This book traces the development of newspapers in the U.S. during their golden age (1830-1930), including influential publishers and journalists, and the increasingly important role newspapers played in American life. It also examines technological innovations in papermaking, typesetting, and printing that made it possible for metropolitan dailies to reach hundreds of thousands of readers. This book is part of the National Postal Museum Library collection, which includes titles relevant to the broader history of communication in America.

Kenneth J. Kutz is the former President of Texasgulf Mining Corporation. He is also the former President of the Collectors Club of New York. The Collectors Club of New York was founded in 1896, making it one of the oldest existing philatelic societies in the United States. This book is about the philatelic history of oil. Stamps and covers (envelopes) are interwoven with postcard illustrations in chronological order of when the events depicted occurred. The book begins with Noah making the ark with coats of pitch.

Brown Gold traces the development of African American children’s literature from the 1870s to the 2000s. The book includes literary criticism and pedagogy, as well as literary history and cultural analysis. The author discusses the use and impact of racial terms such as Afro, Negro, African American, and others. The book also focuses on African American illustrations, and on how African Americans were portrayed and caricaturized in children’s picture books. The discussion addresses the impact of these portrayals on the experiences of African Americans in their daily lives.

This 180-page book is written for older children. The book tracks the adventures of an Irish American family, the Cullens, who were caught up in a competition between two railroad companies vying for government funding in the 1860s. Union Pacific was laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska, while Central Pacific was laying track eastward from Sacramento, California. This work of historical fiction for young readers includes authentic details from the period.

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.

This catalog highlights a spectacular collection of Indian jewels owned by the ruling family of Qatar, the House of Thani. Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani acquired a vast collection of Indian jewelry including some the world’s rarest pieces. He now owns a large number of jeweled objects that originally belonged to India’s Mughal rulers. There is no comparable collection .The catalog itself is also quite stunning, with full-page illustrations of exquisitely detailed Mughal miniatures and intricate jeweled objects.

Birth of the Cool may be the coolest book you will ever see. In this 2008 exhibition catalog of his first retrospective, Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) distills black identity into powerful three-quarter and full-length portraits that teem with style and attitude. His sitters are unapologetic in their self-presentation and the result is a phenomenal elevation of African Americans who would have otherwise gone unnoticed in the decades immediately following the civil rights movement.

René Maran was born in Martinique, educated in France, and served as a colonial administrator in the French colonies of West Africa.  In 1921, he won the Prix Goncourt for Batouala. He was the first black author to be so honored. Although the book's preface includes a blistering critique of French colonial abuses, Maran asserts that the novel is a story not of black against white, but simply of two men in a Banda village fighting over a woman.

This beautiful book, a wordless novel, tells a story of the African slave trade and one slave trader’s obsession and tragic downfall—all in 128 powerful woodcuts that combine Art Deco and Expressionist styles. Lynd Ward was one of America’s finest wood engravers, and the detailed, complicated plates in this book show him as a master craftsman and illustrator who could also reveal psychological anguish through his art. The plates in this second-edition copy are reproduced photographically; the front and back covers are bound in papers showing a woodcut-style design in black and white.

The year is 1890. The French public is eager to learn more about the new colonies that France has won in the "Scramble for Africa." Colonel Henri-Nicholas Frey addresses their curiosity by compiling this geography, which describes in vivid detail the people, places, and things on the coastal regions of West Africa, from southern Morocco to the Congo. Frey draws on his own military experience in West Africa, but his primary sources are the writings of explorers, missionaries, and travelers to the region.

This is a large, thin book with vivid black and white photos throughout. As a young Washington Post reporter covering jazz during the 1930s through 1940s, the author William Gottlieb (1917-2006) took many pictures of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gillespie.  Before he died, he willed for all his photographs to be put in the public domain. This was carried out four years after his death. The Golden Age of Jazz consists of more than two hundred photos and captions, which are visual thrills for jazz fans.

The author of this book, Arnold Shaw (1909–1989) was a songwriter, pianist, composer, and music publisher who wrote a dozen books on 20th century pop music, including two books on Frank Sinatra and a biography of African American pop sensation Harry Belafonte. He founded the Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1985 and taught there for a decade. This 600-page long guide to the history of R&B has eight parts, with seven chapters each. Those chapters are broken out into 25 sections each, which are called grooves.

This book traces the development of gospel music, from its roots in the 1900s through its golden age in 1945-55. How Sweet the Sound takes the reader from African American churches in Los Angeles in 1906; to the Deep South Pentecostal churches; to Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and St. Louis in the 1930s. Author Dr. Horace Boyer (1935-2009) was one of the foremost scholars in African American gospel music, a music historian, and a gospel singer himself.

Author of eight books in the National Postal Museum Library alone (including Gold Fever, California Gold, Black Gold, Klondike Gold, and Victoria Gold) Kenneth Kutz is a gold enthusiast. This 400-page book tells the history of gold prospecting around the world and the effect it had on early explorers, settlement, and colonization. Gold incites both romance and excitement, not just in California, but all over the world.

British printmaker Rupert Shephard (1902-1992) was inspired by the people and cultures of South Africa to create the eighteen prints in this limited-edition portfolio (200 copies). Ndebele women, known for their beadwork and colorful geometric murals, are portrayed here in a warm, lively setting in this lino-cut print from the portfolio. Shephard taught printmaking at Michaelis Art School in Cape Town, South Africa, from 1948 to 1962.