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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.
In 1989 a woman fishing in Texas on a quiet stretch of the Colorado
River snagged a body. Her ""catch"" was the corpse of Johnny
Jenkins, shot in the head. His death was as dramatic as the rare
book dealer's life, which read, as the Austin American-Statesman
declared, ""like a bestseller."" In 1975 Jenkins had staged the
largest rare book coup of the twentieth century - the purchase, for
more than two million dollars, of the legendary Eberstadt inventory
of rare Americana, a feat noted in the New York Times and the Wall
Street Journal. His undercover work for the FBI, recovering rare
books stolen by mafia figures, had also earned him headlines coast
to coast, as had his exploits as ""Austin Squatty,"" playing high
stakes poker in Las Vegas. But beneath such public triumphs lay
darker secrets. At the time of his death, Jenkins was about to be
indicted by the ATF for the arson of his rare books, warehouse, and
offices. Another investigation implicated Jenkins in forgeries of
historical documents, including the Texas Declaration of
Independence. Rumors of million-dollar gambling debts at
mob-connected casinos circulated, along with the rumblings of irate
mafia figures he'd fingered and eccentric Texas collectors he'd
cheated. Had he been murdered? Or was his death a suicide, staged
to look like a murder? How Jenkins, a onetime president of the
Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, came to such an
unseemly end is one of the mysteries Michael Vinson pursues in this
spirited account of a tragic American life. Entrepreneur, con man,
connoisseur, forger, and self-made hero, Jenkins was a Texan who
knew how to bluff but not when to fold.
In 1989 a woman fishing in Texas on a quiet stretch of the Colorado
River snagged a body. Her ""catch"" was the corpse of Johnny
Jenkins, shot in the head. His death was as dramatic as the rare
book dealer's life, which read, as the Austin American-Statesman
declared, ""like a bestseller."" In 1975 Jenkins had staged the
largest rare book coup of the twentieth century - the purchase, for
more than two million dollars, of the legendary Eberstadt inventory
of rare Americana, a feat noted in the New York Times and the Wall
Street Journal. His undercover work for the FBI, recovering rare
books stolen by mafia figures, had also earned him headlines coast
to coast, as had his exploits as ""Austin Squatty,"" playing high
stakes poker in Las Vegas. But beneath such public triumphs lay
darker secrets. At the time of his death, Jenkins was about to be
indicted by the ATF for the arson of his rare books, warehouse, and
offices. Another investigation implicated Jenkins in forgeries of
historical documents, including the Texas Declaration of
Independence. Rumors of million-dollar gambling debts at
mob-connected casinos circulated, along with the rumblings of irate
mafia figures he'd fingered and eccentric Texas collectors he'd
cheated. Had he been murdered? Or was his death a suicide, staged
to look like a murder? How Jenkins, a onetime president of the
Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, came to such an
unseemly end is one of the mysteries Michael Vinson pursues in this
spirited account of a tragic American life. Entrepreneur, con man,
connoisseur, forger, and self-made hero, Jenkins was a Texan who
knew how to bluff but not when to fold.
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Nivayah (Paperback)
Shaniya Carrington; Michelle Vinson Denmark
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R329
Discovery Miles 3 290
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Civil rights activist Medgar Wiley Evers was well aware of the
dangers he would face when he challenged the status quo in
Mississippi in the 1950s and '60s, a place and time known for the
brutal murders of Emmett Till, Reverend George Lee, Lamar Smith,
and others. Nonetheless, Evers consistently investigated the rapes,
murders, beatings, and lynchings of black Mississippians and
reported the horrid incidents to a national audience, all the while
organizing economic boycotts, sit-ins, and street protests in
Jackson as the NAACP's first full-time Mississippi field secretary.
He organized and participated in voting drives and nonviolent
direct-action protests, joined lawsuits to overturn state-supported
school segregation, and devoted himself to a career path that
eventually cost him his life.
This biography of an important civil rights leader draws on
personal interviews from Myrlie Evers-Williams (Evers's widow), his
two remaining siblings, friends, grade-school-to-college
schoolmates, and fellow activists to elucidate Evers as an
individual, leader, husband, brother, and father. Extensive
archival work in the Evers Papers, the NAACP Papers, oral history
collections, FBI files, Citizen Council collections, and the
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Papers, to list a few,
provides a detailed account of Evers's NAACP work and a clearer
understanding of the racist environment that ultimately led to his
murder.
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