Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - April - 2006 Issue
Spectacular Works from Bauman Rare Books
Hooke's grotesque but accurate enlargement of an insect.
Skipping ahead more than a century and a half, item 15 is a fourth draft, in typescript with hand corrections, of President Eisenhower's first inaugural address. It comes with a carbon fifth draft incorporating the changes. At the time, the President-elect was trying to manage the anti-Communist sentiments of the era while avoiding the hysteria of McCarthyism. While standing up for freedom around the world, Eisenhower makes a statement that sounds totally opposite to those of the leadership of his party today with regard to Iraq. Says the General and leader of allied forces in the recent world war, "...we shall never use out strength to try to impress upon any other our own cherished political and economic institutions. We reject the prideful temptation to remake any other people in our own special pattern." $25,000.
The writer of this 1959 speech was not a president and general, but a senator and lieutenant. Nevertheless, he too would soon rise to leader of the free world during the epic Cold War against Communism. Item 16 is a typescript speech with hand corrections by John F. Kennedy in response to the recent visit by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. This was a tense time, and the tension would grow even greater during Kennedy's presidency with the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the future president would have the wisdom to say, "It is far better that we meet at the summit than at the brink." $26,000.
Item 77 is a spectacularly illustrated scientific text, though perhaps not beautiful in the sense of Audubon's "Birds." The book is Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses...by Robert Hooke, published in 1665. This is a first issue of the first edition. Hooke had perfected a compound microscope, from which he sat down and drew a world of unseen creatures too grotesque for many to have imagined. An eighteen-inch long portrait of a flea or louse is enough to cause anyone nightmares, particularly someone who has never before seen such a close-up view of these pests. This work represented a breakthrough both in viewing the microscopic world and in the study of insects. $70,000.
It was the masterpiece of motion cartooning. Walt Disney's "Fantasia" remains a popular film some 65 years after its release. Item 55 is the book that went with it, Walt Disney's Fantasia. It is richly illustrated with stills from the movie. This copy contains an inscription from the master himself, Walt Disney. $12,000.
Item 49 is a bound volume of six months of issues of Nature magazine. It includes issues from January 3, 1953, through June 27, 1953. Tucked into these volumes are the first reports about DNA, and its role in passing down genetic traits from one generation to the next. Most notable is James Watson and Francis Crick's breakthrough reports A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid and Genetic Implications of Deoxyribonucleic Acid. The discovery would earn Watson and Crick a Nobel Prize a decade later. Both Watson and Crick have signed the article, which includes a small drawing of a double helix produced by Crick. $24,000.
We have barely scratched the surface of describing the spectacular works offered with this catalogue. You may reach Bauman Rare Books at www.baumanrarebooks.com or by phone at 800-972-2862.
