Bibliophemera

This is the book in question: Michigan and the Cleveland Era,  edited by Earl D. Babst and Lewis G. Bander Velde (University of Michigan Press, 1948).   The title page adds a subtitle, which offers a clue to the answer to the question in the title of this post: Sketches of University of Michigan Staff Members and Alumni Who Served the Cleveland Administrations 1885-89, 1893-97. At first glance, though, no question arises as to why the book was written. But just inside the front cover, a printed answer is provided anyway on a 5 X 7-inch card from the Michigan Historical Collections, University of Michigan. This card was previously featured in another post I wrote about three years ago on ephemera concerning rare books and collections at the University of Michigan . I came across this card again and thought it deserved its own post because it's a bit unusual. Looks like a good number of University of Michigan alumni and faculty members served in numerous ca...

I recently purchased a couple of books dealing with Michigan history. The ephemera angle for this blog post comes into play in two different ways. One book could actually be called ephemera; it's a paper-bound library catalog of rare books pertaining to Michigan's history. Its title is One Hundred Michigan Rarities , published as Bulletin LX (revised from Bulletin XXVII) by the Clements Library in Ann Arbor , 1950. The other is a hardback book about Michigan history in the era of President Grover Cleveland. Inserted inside the book is a promotional piece of ephemera titled Why Michigan and the Cleveland Era was Written . This is of more interest to me than the book because it led me to an interesting site where I learned about the Michigan Historical Collections housed in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. Here you'll find a treasure trove of historical ephemera--more than 4,500 archival collections, 65,000 printed works, over 10,000 maps, and ne...