Manuscript Digest –August 2019– This complimentary e-digest, launched in 2012, covers significant acquisitions and sales, manuscripts lost and found, rare books and ephemera, document conservation, and more.

In the News

Foul!
The Oregonian | Washington Post, July 19, 2019
Doctored cards. Inflated grades. Suspect values. Scandal is sweeping the community of baseball card collecting. How bad is it? The FBI just got called up.

Flight Risk
Atlas Obscura, July 18, 2019
Before they took their moon shot, Apollo 11’s astronauts signed a stack of autographs. What these “insurance covers” are worth — and the scandal that banned a crew from space.
• Landing Neil Armstrong’s autograph

Revolutionary Warrior
New York Times, July 2, 2019
Dressed as a man, Deb Sampson served in the Continental Army. Her disguise held up. But did her war stories? A neighbor’s long-forgotten diary raises questions and sheds light.

Framing History
Chicago Tribune, July 25, 2019
When Ebony magazine folded, its photo archive was in peril. Would 70 years of the African American experience vanish from view? Then came the auction — and a $30 million sale.

On the Records
Federal Times, July 8, 2019
By year-end 2022, all federal agencies are supposed to give NARA their records electronically. First problem: NARA doesn’t know how many federal agencies there are. What next?

‘Speakeasy Bookstore,’ RIP
New York Times, July 15, 2019
A chapter has closed with the death of Michael Seidenberg of Brazenhead Books. His secret bookstore ran like a salon — and sometimes saloon — for New York bibliophiles.

Still Waters
Drinks Business, July 19, 2019
Newly found records of a 16th-century Scottish still have shaken and stirred the spirits world. Could they be proof that the birthplace of Scotch whisky is not Lindores after all?

Yeast of Eden
NPR, July 31, 2019
A chef. A cat. A critic. What could go wrong? A John Steinbeck story, written for Le Figaro and found at Harry Ransom Center, appears for the first time in English.

Hollywood Bowls
Hollywood Reporter, July 25, 2019
Pauline Kessinger knew how to feed an ego; she ran Paramount’s commissary for years. Her freshly found memoir dishes up Veronica Lake’s Meatloaf and more recipes from the stars.

Pointed Humor
Life Science, July 31, 2019
“I went to Rome and all I got you was this pen.” The inscription on a recently unearthed stylus, dating from about AD 70, writes a new (old?) chapter in the history of gag gifts.

Book Lovers’ Lane, Rare books galore in London’s Cecil Court
> Make a date

Beach Reads … Move over. Check out this underwater library.
> Make a splash