Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - June - 2006 Issue
The Latest from Bauman Rare Books
A valentine from a very youthful Ernest Hemingway.
Poor Hoover could not have imagined what was about to happen. His greatest concern seemed to be disobedience to the law, particularly with regard to Prohibition. This problem would quickly be pushed to the backburner as Hoover tried to cope with the biggest economic catastrophe the nation had ever seen. Item 103 is a printing of this address, taken from a copy of Davis Lott's Inaugural Addresses of the American Presidents (pp. 215-223) and signed by Hoover. $1,800.
Speaking of the nation's 31st president, most people are not aware that in an earlier life, he was a translator. Item 104 is a copy of De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola, translated by Herbert Hoover. Hoover was a mining engineer in 1912 when this book was published. Actually, his wife, a Latin teacher, did most of the translating from Latin to English, but the future president provided annotations. This copy contains an inscription from Hoover. $3,200.
Almost half a millennium ago, he predicted everything that has happened since. He also predicted everything that hasn't happened. It seems that Nostradamus predicted everything you want to believe he predicted. The sixteenth century seer had the good sense to keep his predictions vague enough so that everything that has happened can be said to have been predicted by him. Of course, it's much harder to tell what he projects for the years ahead, but undoubtedly once hindsight becomes available, we will know that he predicted the future correctly as well. Item 146 is The True Prophesies or Prognostications of Michael Nostradamus. Published in 1672, this edition came about a century after his predictions, but this is still the first edition of Nostradamus in English. $10,500.
Benjamin Franklin was a man of many talents, but he was no Nostradamus. In 1760, he published The Interest of Great Britain Considered. In it, he sought to calm fears that the growing American colonies might one day unify and rebel against their colonial leader. Says Franklin, "...can it reasonably be supposed there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which protects and encourages them, with which they have so many connections and ties of blood, interest, and affection, and which 'tis well known they all love more than they love one another? In short, there are so many causes that must operate to prevent it that I will venture to say, an union amongst them for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible." Franklin was no seer in 1760, for sixteen year later he would be one of the leaders of the movement which made the "impossible" reality. Item 87. $9,500.
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