All posts in Featured Books

Sometimes I come across items in the BHL collection that elicit an immediate response. In this case it was, “Look at all those ears!”

It’s almost a year now since we moved to Bloomfield, and I’m still not over my disappointment at our new New Jersey home’s failure to honor its most distinguished citizen. Not a statue, not a plaque to be found anywhere; and that short boulevard leading to the cemetery turns out, alas, to be named for Woodrow.

In 1858, Journal and Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology published a paper proposing what would later be recognized as a revolutionary scientific concept: the theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. If we were to ask you who penned this publication, chances are your response would be Charles Darwin.

Contrary to what one might think, a curiosity cabinet is not a piece of furniture, rather it is an entire room(s) dedicated to the collection of objects that are meant to bring shock, awe, inspiration, and stimulating conversation to its viewers. During the 16th-19th centuries, the curiosity cabinet became a popular way for aristocrats and aspiring bourgeoisie to show off personal wealth and erudition. These “rooms of wonder” are considered the precursors to the modern museum

For this week’s BHL Book of the Week, I’d like to highlight a book that is all about one of my favorite plant species, Humulus lupulus, better known as hops.

Imagine away the accumulated knowledge of the past 250 years. Forget that there is such a thing as a field guide. Let google vanish from memory.

And put yourself into the forest primeval of southeastern North America on a warm summer night in the middle of the eighteenth century. Above the rasping of the cicadas and the creaking of the tree crickets, beyond the yowls and hoots and delicate whistles of the owls, you hear the strange syncopated whistles of what has to be a bird.

But which one?

If you are reading this post then the world hasn’t ended…but, you probably already knew it wasn’t going to end.

Don’t look so disappointed. Yes, the human race regrettably has always had a collective death wish, eagerly awaiting the promise of the end of times since the beginning of times. Or have we?