The Downtown Collection: Documenting the Scene
By Mike Kelly The Bay Psalm Book exemplifies a quintessential American stance: a small group of outcasts moved into a new neighborhood and set up a press to promulgate their world view. Marching into the wilderness and clearing a space in which the voice of one’s community can be freely articulated is central to the American experience. “Americana” encompases all publishing formats and chronological periods in which this impulse can be found--whether motivated by religion, as in the Massachusetts Bay colony, or something less coherent and more difficult to define, as in the case of the ...