news

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.

How fast could you write a 300 page book? Sensationalist journalist Jay Henry Mowbray turned out this edition of Sinking of The "Titanic" (complete with illustrations and ready for sale) by May 11, 1912, less than one month after the ship struck that infamous iceberg. Speed puts this book into a curious genre—the “instant book.” The instant book narrates a contemporaneous event through a collage of sources, like government hearings or embellished descriptions, coalesced by journalists, then sold door-to-door as soon as possible. But why the need for speed?

The Caledonian railway, or The Caley as it was fondly named, was a Scottish railway system that connected Scotland to London from the 1840’s until its dissolution in the 1920’s. This compilation of book excerpts, articles, news clippings, and advertisements chronicles and romanticizes the waning decades of the Caledonian Railway from the turn of the century until 1923 when The Caley was absorbed into the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway by The Railways Act of 1921, an act that streamlined 120 individual British railway systems into just four.