“Impressive. . . The best book written on this subject.” —Noam Chomsky
A product of ten years of research and support from leading American and European universities, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books traces a tragic story: the smashed tablets of ancient Sumer, the widespread looting of libraries in post-war Iraq, the leveling of the Library of Alexandria, book burnings by Crusaders and Nazis, and suppressive censorship against authors past and present.
Richard Brautigan published Please Plant This Book in the Spring of 1968. It consisted of eight packets of garden seeds, each printed with a poem, all gathered in a small folder.
A version is at pleaseplantthisbook.com. Although the cover of the folder (above) appears to be an actual scan, the packets with verses look like digital facsimiles rather than scans.
The Brautigan Bibliography and Archive has lots of info here, including what appear to be scans of the actual packets (scroll to the bottom of the page). The scans are tiny, and clicking on them won’t make them bigger, but if you right-click on any of them and choose “View Image,” you’ll see a larger version.
The complete Lost Girls will be published as a swanky single-volume hardcover retailing for $45 (Amazon has it for $29.70), compared to the original three-volume set from 2006 that retailed for $75 (and is now out of print). It’s due in April.
Harvey Kurtzman changed the face of American humor when he created the legendary MAD comic. As editor and chief writer from its inception in 1952, through its transformation into a slick magazine, and until he left MAD in 1956, he influenced an entire generation of cartoonists, comedians, and filmmakers. In 1962, he co-created the long-running Little Annie Fanny with his long-time artistic partner Will Elder for Playboy, which he continued to produce until his virtual retirement in 1988.
Between MAD and Annie Fanny, Kurtzman’s biographical summaries will note that he created and edited three other magazines, Trump, Humbug, and Help!, but, whereas his MAD and Annie Fanny are readily available in reprint form, his major satirical work in the interim period is virtually unknown. Humbug, which had poor distribution, may be the least known, but to those who treasure the rare original copies, it equals or even exceeds MAD in displaying Kurtzman’s creative genius.
Robert The’s artistic medium of choice is the book. The object above is an actual book. (Funny that I stumbled across his work the day after finding out that famed literary biographer Lyndall Gordon has titled her upcoming bio of Emily Dickinson A Loaded Gun.)
When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
–Albert Camus, The Plague (translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert)
Thanks to the successful lobbying efforts of the U.S. chemical industry, Americans are being exposed to an array of environmental and health hazards—including rising rates of infertility, endocrine system disruptions, neurological disorders, and cancer—from which many others around the world are being protected.
In Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power, award-winning investigative journalist Mark Schapiro reveals how products on American shelves are increasingly being linked with serious health hazards—hazards, like Bisphenol A (BPA) and plastic softening phthalates, that the European Union is leading the rest of the world in legislating out of existence.
Schapiro takes the reader inside the global power shift that has gone almost wholly unreported in the United States, exposing not only the health and environmental consequences of this shift, but its implications for the American economy. He demonstrates how the environmental progress underway in Europe is prompting innovation and enabling their firms to beat American companies in the global competition for markets—markets that are becoming increasingly sensitive to environmental and health concerns.
As the Obama administration considers options for reform, Schapiro also demonstrates that what’s already happening in the world’s largest single market may suggest a route out of America’s long-lasting, and dangerous, status quo.
Those few steps from the landing to Albertine’s door, those few steps which no one now could prevent my taking, I took with delight, with prudence, as though plunged into a new and strange element, as if in going forward I had been gently displacing the liquid stream of happiness, and at the same time with a strange feeling of absolute power, and of entering at length into an inheritance which had belonged to me from all time.
This was at a show by Howard Devoto’s Luxuria, whose song “Mlle” opens with the original French version of this passage.
American Beauty is an artist’s investigation into those Icons of popular culture wading in politics, religion, decadence and sex. This book commemorates and pokes fun at those who have fallen from society’s graces because of lousy judgment and questionable life styles. Prepare yourself for a guided tour of America’s underbelly of misconduct and bad taste through the artworks of Chicago artist and provocateur Michael Hernandez de Luna, who puts it all together for you in the miniature framework of the postage stamp, while using the US postal system as phantom collaborators in the process of creating and certifying his art with the bona-fide markings of the postage cancellation. This book rolls over the many issues of Americana with images hailing the protesting cheer of subversive activism, philately, humor and satire. This book contains colorful biting images of raw and provocative artwork that will surely make you laugh! A little something for everybody!
The FBI summarized the file when it was posted on its website:
Thomas Mann, German author, Nobel prize winner in literature, and naturalized American citizen, was investigated from 1927 through 1955. The security investigation gathered information showing Mann’s affiliation with communist causes and associates.
Mann’s file is one of several dozen files that used to be available on the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act website but have been quietly removed. I have no idea why the feds yanked these files, but I’ll be posting all the ones I can recover at my other main website, The Memory Hole. Meanwhile, look for more writers’ files to be posted here in the future.
An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The map is inherently political– and the contributions to this book wear their politics on their sleeves.
An Atlas of Radical Cartography provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.
Animation artist Lou Romano (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, Monsters, Inc., etc.) is creating illustrations and linoleum-block prints for 15 of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Above are the illos for “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Other images from this exciting work in progress are here.
ABBA: Members of the pop group were declared dead by a German Newspaper in 1976. It was claimed they had been killed in an aeroplane crash, with only member Anni-Frid Lyngstad surviving, but badly disfigured.[3] The group appeared on German television to disprove the rumour.
Pope Benedict XV, whose pneumonia in January 1922 caused worldwide expectation of his impending death. His death was prematurely announced by a New York newspaper with the front-page headline “Pope Benedict XV is dead”, followed by a later edition headlined “Pope has remarkable recovery.” However, the Pope did subsequently die of the illness on 22 January.
Lal Bihari, Indian founder of the Association of the Dead, an organisation which highlights the plight of people in Uttar Pradesh who are incorrectly declared dead by relatives in order to steal their land, usually in collusion with corrupt officials. Bihari himself was officially dead from 1976 to 1994 as a result of his uncle’s attempt to acquire his land. Among various attempts to publicize his situation and demonstrate that he was alive, he stood for election against Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 (and lost). He was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for his ‘posthumous’ activities.
Nicephorus Glycas: in 1896, having presumably been declared dead, the Greek Orthodox bishop of Lesbos awoke in his coffin after he had been lying in state for two days. He sat up and asked what mourners were staring at.
Ernest Hemingway: after the author and his wife Mary Welsh Hemingway were involved in two African plane crashes in 1954, newspapers reported that both had died. Hemingway survived, but suffered extensive injuries which affected him for the rest of his life. AE Hotchner claimed that Hemingway read a scrap book of his obituaries every morning with a glass of champagne after the incident.[80] Hemingway committed suicide in 1961.[81]
This reminds me of a novel from a few years ago, Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects by Christopher Miller, that takes the form of liner notes to an imaginary 4-CD set.
I’m sure there are other entries in this unrecognized genre - novels that take the form of a non-novel, even nonfictional, publication - but I’m blanking at the moment.
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Feb 23, 2009 
This is the rarest of Brautigan’s books. Four are currently 
The complete Lost Girls will be published as a swanky single-volume hardcover retailing for $45 (
Start saving your pennies….
I’m starting a new series on Books Are People, Too - FBI files on famous writers. First up is Thomas Mann.
Leann Shapton’s new novel,