 One of the great American bookstores is shutting down. 
The Denver Book Fair may not look like much on the outside, but as you see below, the interior is loaded. And that’s just one room. The Book Fair is probably one of the better used bookstores in the U.S., thanks to its focus not just on books, but on vintage magazines. The shot below shows just a room of magazines, of all types, boxed, shelved, from the 1930s through 1980s. Customers have to grab a ladder and dig through the stacks themselves, which we did three days in a row. We were also given access to a utility closet that was piled high with stuff that had never been sorted, including some old calendars. We’ll start scanning some of these finds tomorrow. Now the bad news. The Book Fair is closing down. The owners haven’t decided on a shutdown date yet, but it will be soon. It’s really too bad we won’t be in the U.S. for their fire sale. While many of the tens of thousands of books will certainly find good homes, we suspect most of the vintage magazines will end up in a dumpster. But at least we were fortunate enough to be able to raid the stocks before the end. Farewell Book Fair. 
 This woman is useless, brother. She can’t even gut a fish. What are we to do with her? And stop saying “schwing” when I ask that. I have no idea what that means. 
Above, a cover for Walter D. Edmonds’ frontier novel The Captive Women, which appeared in 1950 as a paperback, 1949 as a hardback, and had been serialized in 1937 in the Saturday Evening Post as In the Hands of the Senecas. Basically, what you get here are separate accounts of whites, mostly women, who have been captured by Native Americans, circa 1776 to 1784. Edmonds, who wrote the acclaimed Drums Along the Mohawk, specialized in historical novels set in the American northeast. The right of white men to invade the land is presumed, but you still have to consider this fairly balanced writing for the time period. The Indians have personalities and motivations, which is the most you can hope for in 1930s-era pop fiction on this particular subject. The captive whose odyssey is followed most closely is that of a newlywed named Delia, who ends up wife to an Indian chief and bears him a child. Edmonds also wrote about fifteen books for children, including Bert Breen’s Barn, which won the National Book Award for Children’s Literature in 1976. The art here is by Denver Gillen, whose work you can see much more of at this blog.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1985—Theodore Sturgeon Dies
American science fiction and pulp writer Theodore Sturgeon, who pioneered a technique known as rhythmic prose, in which his text would drop into a standard poetic meter, dies from lung fibrosis, which may have been caused by his smoking, but also might have been caused by his exposure to asbestos during his years as a Merchant Marine. 1945—World War II Ends
At Reims, France, German General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms, thus ending Germany's participation in World War II. Jodl is then arrested and transferred to the German POW camp Flensburg, and later he is made to stand before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials. At the conclusion of the trial, Jodl is sentenced to death and hanged as a war criminal. 1954—French Are Defeated at Dien Bien Phu
In Vietnam, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which had begun two months earlier, ends in a French defeat. The United States, as per the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, gave material aid to the French, but were only minimally involved in the actual battle. By 1961, however, American troops would begin arriving in droves, and within several years the U.S. would be fully embroiled in war. 1937—The Hindenburg Explodes
In the U.S, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the German zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg catches fire and is incinerated within a minute while attempting to dock in windy conditions after a trans-Atlantic crossing. The disaster, which kills thirty-six people, becomes the subject of spectacular newsreel coverage, photographs, and most famously, Herbert Morrison's recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field. But for all the witnesses and speculation, the actual cause of the fire remains unknown. |
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