An unlikely bookseller in New York City became the leading dealer in rare Western Americana for most of the twentieth century. After working in western-U.S. and South American gold mines at the turn of the twentieth century, Edward Eberstadt (1883-1958) returned to his home in New York City in 1907. Through luck and happenstance, he purchased an old book for fifty cents that turned out to be a rare sixteenth-century Mexican imprint. From this bit of serendipity, Eberstadt quickly became one of the leading western Americana rare book dealers. In this book Michael Vinson tells the story of how Edward Eberstadt & Sons developed its legendary book collection, which formed the backbone of many of today's top western Americana archives. Although the firm's business records have not survived, Edward and his sons, Charles and Lindley, were all prodigious letter writers, and nearly every collector kept his or her correspondence. Drawing upon these letters and on his own extensive experience in the rare book trade, Vinson gives the reader a vivid sense of how the commerce in rare books and manuscripts unfolded during the era of the Eberstadts, particularly in the relationships between dealers and customers. He explores the backstory that scholars of art history and museology have pursued in recent decades: the assembling of cultural treasures, their organization for use, and the establishment of institutions to support that use. His work describes the important role this key bookselling firm played in the western Americana trade from the early 1900s to Eberstadt & Sons' dissolution in 1975. From Yale University and the American Antiquarian Society to the Newberry Library and the Huntington Library, the firm of Edward Eberstadt & Sons has left its mark in western Americana repositories across the nation. Told here for the first time, the Eberstadt story reveals how one family's business and legacy have shaped the study of the American West.

The revelatory saga of Pixar's rocky start and improbable success

After Steve Jobs was dismissed from Apple in the early 1990s, he turned his attention to a little-known graphics company he owned called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and executive to whom he had never spoken before. He hoped to persuade Levy to help him pull Pixar back from the brink of failure.

This is the extraordinary story of what happened next: how Jobs and Levy concocted and pulled off a highly improbable plan that transformed Pixar into one of Hollywood's greatest success stories. Levy offers a masterful, firsthand account of how Pixar rose from humble beginnings, what it was like to work so closely with Jobs, and how Pixar's story offers profound lessons that can apply to many aspects of our lives.

In September, 2015 President Barack Obama informed The Forward, in a historic interview, of his shock at learning of the closing of his favorite NYC Bagel eatery, H&H Bagels, in January of 2012. While the President was shocked by the closing of the world's most famous, and recognizable, bagel brand, what was truly shocking were the underlying facts and circumstances surrounding the closing. While most people knew H&H as the iconic, Upper West Side Bagel Shop where the lines rounded the block, where celebrities loved to frequent, and where one of the most popular Seinfeld television episodes was created, few people knew about the drama and decadence that existed behind the scenes of this NYC landmark. The Rise and Fall of H&H Bagels takes you on a journey that starts with the fulfillment of the American Dream and ends in contested, five year Bankruptcy. This is the outrageous, true, story of a man who defied the odds and became an American legend, and then defied logic and the law by dismantling his beloved Empire. The story of H&H Bagels is not only the story of the rise and fall of a thriving American business, it is a story of intrigue, economics, corruption, and resiliency, as told, with humor, from the perspective of the one man who lived through it all-its National Business Manager and right hand to the man at the top of the H&H Empire, Helmer Toro.