Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Library of Congress
When Jefferson wanted a job done right, he did it himself.
What reader has not been infuriated at having to look up something in a book with no index? Serious books written in this century usually are indexed.
A noted historian’s very personal tour of the city where so much of the American past took shape, with excursions into institutions famous and obscure, the archives that are the nation’s memory, and the haunts of some noble ghosts.
The only one of our presidents who retired to Washington after leaving office was Woodrow Wilson, and for all his celebrated professorial background he certainly did it in style.
A new book presents uncommon portraits of our past from the photographic archives of the Library of Congress
“If one loves old photographs, with all their compelling I magic, there is no happier a hunting ground than the I Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.” So writes Oliver Jensen, the former editor of this magazine, in the introduction to
The broad expanse of ocean that separated Plymouth from Mother England helped create a novel experiment in democracy that grew as the American colonies expanded.
When he offered Congress his library, his foes charged that it was full of books which “never ought to be read” and probably ought to be burned
When, on the night of August 24–25, 1814, General Robert Ross burned Washington, most though not all, of the infant congressional library went up in flames. Patrick Magruder, who doubled as clerk of the House and librarian, had betaken himself to Virginia Springs, and the convulsive efforts of his assistants to save the library foundered on the lack of wagons. A subsequent congressional investigation concluded somewhat illogically that the hapless Magruder should have foreseen this embarrassment and provided for it, and accepted his resignation.
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