The Little Engine That Could...

...feminist hero?

Top 10 Feminist Books

The list, care of the Guardian.

Batman for US Savings Bonds

Our Lenin

A Soviet propaganda children's book.

Enjoy!

10 Best American Political Novels

The list, care of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

5 Best Books on the Kennedy Assassination

The list, care of The Nation.

The Kennedy Assassination...

...in books.

5 Great Books on George Washington

The list, care of Patheos.

George Washington's Presidential Library

What Would Orwell Say about Our Surveillance Society?

That was the question recently posed by NPR.

From the piece...

President Obama says he's not Big Brother. The author who created the concept might disagree.

Addressing the controversy over widespread government surveillance of telephone records and Internet traffic Friday, Obama said, "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amuck, but when you actually look at the details, then I think we've struck the right balance."

But for many commentators, revelations this week that the federal government is sweeping up records of communications and transactions between millions of Americans sounds uncomfortably like the vision of the British novelist and journalist George Orwell.

How Much Did a First Edition, First Issue of Thomas Paine's Common Sense Go For?

Several cents.

NSA Surveillance As Told Through Children's Books

The list, care of the Guardian.

Read This Post, Or the Devilish Hoardes Win

The British Library is having a persuasive propaganda exhibit.

From a piece on the Londonist...

The British Library’s new exhibition provides an exploration of the persuasive power of this state tool, looking at examples from ancient Rome to the present day.

Curators at this impressive new show have taken what they describe as a “neutral” definition of the word, embracing all activity by the state to influence behaviour, whether for good or evil. So, alongside troubling posters from Nazi Germany and Northern Ireland in the 1980s are gentler examples of state persuasion about the benefits of drinking milk and adhering to the Green Cross Code. Chairman Mao’s much-reproduced mythology is analysed, as are uses of the Olympic Games (in London and elsewhere) as a method of promoting national identity.

While the main focus of the exhibition is on propaganda since World War I, there are examples from earlier in history: a coin from the third century BC; a huge portrait of Napoleon; and a curious fan from the reign of George III.

1950s Propaganda Posters from China

Enjoy!

Pieces of Kennedy's Camelot Up for Auction

Poetic Presidents

The Poetry Foundation matched 12 commanders-in-chief with the poets that inspired them.

Best Books Written by Presidents

The list, care of the Daily Beast.

The Love Letters...of LBJ?

Indeed.

From an AP story...

Unlike brief and instantaneous Twitter or Facebook posts or cryptic phone texts, the letters — most multiple pages — reflect a time when the handwritten note was the chief form of communication.
"Dearly Beloved," Taylor begins one, before reconsidering her salutation. "This sounds like a sermon — it isn't."

He signs them, "Lyndon," or "Lyndon Baines." She signs, "Bird." One closes, "Do you still love me? Devotedly, Bird."

Her stationery carries that name, given to her by a caretaker nurse who described her as "pretty as a lady bird." Her handwriting is very neat in thin black script.

His, also in script with thick dark black ink, is on letterhead from Washington's Dodge Hotel, where he lived while working as an aide to U.S. Rep. Richard Kleberg of Texas. Other letters are on Kleberg's office stationery, sent simply to "Miss Bird Taylor, Karnack, Texas," where her home didn't have a telephone. The envelope carries 6 cents postage, but some he sent by air mail or special delivery.

Pablo Neruda to Be Exhumed

What caused his death?

From a piece in the Huffington Post...

The body of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda will be exhumed for an autopsy seeking clues to what killed him.

Neruda died days after the 1973 military coup that ended the life of his close friend, socialist President Salvador Allende. With Gen. Augusto Pinochet's forces killing prominent leftists, friends had a plane waiting to carry Neruda into exile.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time, but friends have told The Associated Press that the official cause of extreme malnutrition makes no sense because Neruda weighed 220 pounds (100 kilograms).

Winston Churchill - Poet?

Indeed. His only known poem is about to go up at auction.

From a story in the Guardian...

Around 115 years after it was written, the only known poem written by an adult Churchill has been discovered by Roy Davids, a retired manuscript dealer from Great Haseley in Oxfordshire.

Our Modern Watchwords, which was apparently inspired by Tennyson and Kipling, will go on sale at Bonham's auction house in London in the spring. Written in 1899 or 1900, when Churchill was a cornet – equivalent to today's second lieutenant – in the 4th Hussars, the 10-verse poem is a tribute to the Empire.

The author peppers the poem with the names of remote outposts defending Britain's interests around the world – many of which he would have visited as a young officer and even fought at – including Weihaiwei in China, Karochaw in Japan and Sokoto, in north-west Nigeria.

The paean to Britain's might, however, does not scale the heights of the literary efforts that marked Churchill's later life – including his Nobel Prize-winning History of the English Speaking Peoples.