Bibliophemera

Well, this is never a good look for a book shop. Or any business. What looks like a corpse being wheeled out of Mary's Book Shop in Milwaukee in this 1966 press photo, is a book salesman who survived a gunshot wound inside the store. I suppose his face is covered for privacy. So what happened? Mary's Book Shop, a benign name for a second-hand book shop known for its inventory of left-wing political texts, and rare publications, was a gathering space for radicals, activists, and intellectuals in Milwaukee. It's owners, Fred and Mary Blair, were prominent members of the Communist Party in Wisconsin. That earned them the label of major communist bookstore by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In November 1966, a troubled 17-year-old walked into Mary's Book Shop at 318 W. Juneau Avenue in Milwaukee, carrying a gun and hell-bent on killing a communist (as he would later tell police). Fred Blair was in his sights, but a traveling book salesman, Ralph Sacks, happened to be in th...

I got this 1923 ad cover for The Thresher , the student newspaper at Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston because of the local history, which I collect. Turns out, though, it has a pretty good biblio angle so I thought I'd share it here as a piece of ephemera appropriate for this blog. Had it not been connected to my native city's history, I might have passed on this piece and I would have overlooked the book connections and interesting history that I discovered by researching the addressee on the envelope--Gilbert Harry Doane (1897-1980). Doane was a librarian and professor with positions at several university libraries, most notably the University of Wisconsin. He was also an author, genealogist, and book collector. As one of his books ( About Collecting Bookplates ) would suggest, he also collected bookplates. Other books he wrote included The Legend of the Book and Searching for Your Ancestors . I've done a lot of genealogy research over the years and have a...