Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - April - 2006 Issue
A Variety of Books from John Michael Lang
Boston Corbett, the man who shot John Wilkes Booth.
Lincoln's assassin was trapped in a barn, which the forces lit on fire to force him out. However, Corbett found a crack in the wall and shot Booth dead. Corbett was arrested for disobeying orders. But Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered his release and allowed him to receive his share of the reward money. After the War, he bounced around, employing his hatter's trade, ending up living in a hole he dug into a hillside in Kansas, where he suffered a mental breakdown in 1878. However, he recovered sufficiently to a get a job as doorkeeper to the Kansas House of Representatives, where one day he brandished a revolver, threatening to finish off heretics in the legislature. He was declared insane and committed to an asylum. On May 26, 1888, Corbett escaped, and after a brief stay with someone he met in Andersonville, Corbett disappeared, never to be heard from again. Item 24 is Corbett's signed calling card, including his military rank, along with a photogravure of the man he killed. $350.
The Double Door by Theodora Keogh is an early (1950) novel dealing with gay issues. It is a book about a gay married man living a double life. The book's author was a woman unafraid of tackling controversial issues in her books. This copy was autographed by Theodora Keogh, also known as Theodora Roosevelt Keogh. She is the granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, quite a daring individual himself. Item 35. $100.
Speaking of President Theodore Roosevelt, his is the last picture in The White House Gallery of Official Portraits of the Presidents, published in 1901. Evidently this was published late in 1901, as Roosevelt did not succeed to that office until the death of William McKinley late that September. Along with the portraits, the book includes a brief historical review of the presidents and their administrations. Here is your chance to obtain not only the portraits of leaders we all can envision, such as Lincoln and Washington, but also those of Chester Arthur, Millard Fillmore, Grover Cleveland, Zachary Taylor, Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. Item 72. $300.
Item 21 is a 1943 edition of one of the most popular cookbooks ever written, The Joy of Cooking. It was originally self-published by author Irma Rombauer in 1931, but later became enormously successful and is still being published to this day. It includes a section on sugarless recipes, not for the reasons of diet one would expect to be the explanation today, but because sugar was rationed during wartime 1943. This copy carries the uncommon autograph of Mrs. Rombauer. $950.
Item 50 is an ugly expose, I Break Strikes: The Technique of Pearl L. Bergoff, by Edward Levinson, published in 1935. Bergoff, a boy named "Pearl," may have made up for that less than masculine name by engaging in the strong-arm career of breaking strikes. He would deliver strikebreakers to companies in need of this service, those "workers" often being criminals and other assorted unpleasant and violent types. He provided his services to some of the most respected of firms, from the Waldorf Hotel to the Erie Railroad, and performed numerous jobs on behalf of public employers, notably the City of New York. Bergoff was reported to have taken in $2 million to provide scabs for the Erie strike, and that 54 people died as a result of his attacks on workers. The techniques of people like Bergoff were finally dealt with by the passage of the Wagner Act in the 1930s prohibiting mass transportation of strikebreakers. $75.
You may reach John Michael Lang Fine Books at 206-624-4100 or by email at jmlbooks@isomedia.com
