Carol Ann Fitzgerald on James Branch Cabell and Alfred Jackson Hanna’s The St. Johns: A Parade of Diversities:

This is the twenty-fourth volume in the “Rivers of America” series. The series was planned and started by Constance Lindsay Skinner (1877-1939) and numbers sixty-five titles altogether…. My collection of the “Rivers of America” series began with this book, a casual purchase at a book fair in 1986, the first in a collection that now numbers more than 400 volumes, including first printings, special commemorative editions, signed or inscribed copies and reprints…..

I continue to collect Series Americana, such as “American Folkways,” “The American Lake Series,” and the “Seaport Series,” and I am now at work on a descriptive bibliography of about fifteen such series, beginning with those published in the 1940s.

John H. Keck on Jay Gould’s “Survey Map of Part of Delaware County, New York”:

Jay Gould, one of America’s greatest financiers, was born in Roxbury, New York. After secondary schooling in Albany, he was employed in Roxbury at his father’s hardware store. There he learned surveying. He began his professional work in 1852 (at the age of sixteen) with the survey and mapping of Ulster County, New York. This was followed in 1853-1856 with Albany, Delaware, and Sullivan counties…. In 1984, I visited Lyndhurst, Gould’s mansion on the Hudson River near Tarrytown, New York. I was fascinated with the home and became very interested in Gould. Over the years, I have sought rare and interesting Gould material at auctions and from dealers. This hand-drawn and colored survey map was prepared by Jay Gould in February 1856, and bears his oval, embossed seal. It is interesting to note his close attention to detail and form at the early age of nineteen….

Kenneth W. Rendell on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense…:

The publication of Common Sense in 1776 had an immediate riveting effect on patriots in America who were ready to heed its message. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Samuel Adams were all suspected of being the anonymous author. Paine, after bitter quarrels with his first printer, let a number of others reprint his pamphlet in 1776. Richard Gimbel, in his bibliography, writes “It swept the country like a prairie fire and Paine poured more fuel on the flames by giving authority to other printers to publish it.” As a direct result of overwhelming distribution, the Declaration of Independence was unanimously ratified on July 4, 1776.

I will never forget the day in 1953 when I opened my fourth-grade history book, my first, and saw a picture of Common Sense that “was dropped in the streets of Boston in 1776, (explaining its water stain).