smithsonian

This book is Part 1 of an important four volume publication on the history of Nepal. The set was formerly in the private library of Dr. Mary Shepherd Slusser. This volume and one other in the set are in need of conservation treatment.

In 2015, media outlets were abuzz with the news of the discovery of a sunken slave ship near the coast of South Africa. The Portuguese slave ship Sao José Paquete de Africa (often shortened to Sao José) began its journey in 1794 from Mozambique, heading to the cotton and rice plantations of Brazil with a cargo of roughly 500 African captives. The ship never reached its destination—as it rounded the Cape of Good Hope, it was ripped apart by high winds and sank just off the coast. Although the crew survived, 212 of the slaves drowned.

The Botany and Horticulture Library has in its collection Garden Club of America (GCA) booklets from 1924 to 2003, with information on the organization's annual meeting. This one celebrates the GCA's fiftieth anniversary in 1963. The book lists the meeting program and officers, and includes a short paragraph on each of the houses and gardens on the garden tours. In this book, two places listed on the tours are of particular interest: Cliveden, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, was built in 1763 by Benjamin Chew, and remained in the Chew family for seven generations.

John Randolph Spears (b. 1850) was a well-traveled journalist at turn of the century, eventually writing nearly a dozen books, primarily on nautical and maritime themes. This early title is about the land, sea, flora, fauna, and cultures of South America’s southernmost region. The “gold diggings” from the title are mostly done on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego, where, after heavy storms, gold shows up on the black sands. The quest for gold often creates conflicts with indigenous communities of the area, which Spears takes great care to describe with sensitivity (for the times).

In 2001, British artist Jeremy Deller received a residency from the CCAC Wattis Institute in San Francisco. He applied his honorarium toward a used Jeep and five acres of land in the Mojave Desert for $2000, thereby staking his own claim upon the Golden State. His fellowship resulted in an unorthodox but compelling guidebook tracing California’s history from the 19th century mining boom to the post-dot-com recession, as found along its dusty highways and in its roadside museums.

The late-16th century was the golden age of Japanese screen painting, both literally and figuratively. The Momoyama period (1573-1615) was also an age of monumental architecture, with feudal lords building forts and castles of a size unprecedented in Japan. The great masters of the art of screen painting who were called upon to decorate the interiors of these large buildings filled them with screens of bold and innovative aesthetics, some with gold leaf covering their entire surfaces. Japan had a well-established tradition of incorporating gold leaf into art and decorative work.

Los Angeles-based video artist Doug Aitken is known for his multi-screen environments projected onto iconic buildings, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum in 2012. In the spring of 2007, Aitken premiered the video projection Sleepwalkers on seven facades of the Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan. Four years later, Aitken partnered with Princeton Architectural Press and DFA Records to create a multimedia artist’s box based on Sleepwalkers.

From the National Air and Space Museum Library's rare book collection, this 1953 classic is another publication from the Golden Book series on aviation for young readers. It was given to the Smithsonian’s National Air Museum (as it was called then) in 1957 by Paul Garber, the first curator of aeronautics for the Smithsonian. It is filled with aircraft illustrations, flight history, and biographies of well-known aviators of the period. Due to its age and paper quality, it is in need of some preservation treatment.  

One of the titles from the popular Golden Book children’s series, this book covers the space shuttle era and some history of space travel. It includes photographs and illustrations of what space and planetary exploration might be like in the future. Written for “junior space enthusiasts,” it is an example of the breadth of material on aviation and space flight written for a popular audience contained in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Library. 

Written by former National Air and Space Museum curator for rocketry Frank H. Winter, this Smithsonian publication is considered to be the first comprehensive history of the use of rockets as artillery in the late-18th and 19th centuries. Englishmen William Congreve and William Hale developed and refined the rocket as a piece of technology. Gunpowder rockets have been used in a variety of military and non-military applications, including life-saving (rescues at sea), whaling, and torpedoes.

“Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of expediency.” This powerful quote from Henry Highland Garnet inspired the title of this book. Dr.

Written by Dr. Cynthia Carter, former director of Africare and current Chief Development Officer at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, this richly illustrated book uses artifacts, images, and documents to trace the history of slavery in North America, from ancient Africa to the suffering still experienced by African Americans today.