Library of America goes Broadway and more

In an effort to appeal to an ever-widening range of readers, Library of America offers a collection of 16 Broadway classic musicals from 1927-1969. It is much more than a "fake book," with plenty of illustrations and revealing insights into the long running musicals, but I think you have to be a serious fan to shell out 60 bucks for this two-volume set.

It is one of many interesting titles due out in the coming months. A collection of Ring Lardner came out in August, which tempts me a great deal. A set of early Elmore Leonard novels also caught my eye. There's also a new collection of Louisa May Alcott, keeping in their classical vein.

Library of America has grown to over 200 volumes since it was established in 1979, and is making a concerted effort to keep up with the times. It has covered an impressive range of topics over the past 35 years, from the colonial years of America to contemporary journalism, with just about every piece of Americana in between. LOA still provides subscriptions, but you can find their volumes through most book suppliers, although you might not necessarily get the slip case that comes with direct purchases.

Among my personal favorites are the Writings and Drawings of James Thurber and The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac by Francis Parkman. What are your favorite titles?

Comments

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog