British Library
Source: Wikipedia

I have just seen that the British Library in London has reached a deal with Google to digitize roughly 250,000 books, newspapers, articles, etc from between 1700 and 1870. These years were chosen based on copyright. 1870 is the latest sure date that the European copyrights have expired. The British Library has the largest collection of books of any library in Great Britain and is the equivalent of our Library of Congress in that they automatically receive a copy of every single book published in the country.

Many of the books which will be digitized are currently not available in the public rooms of the library. Either they are too old or there is simply not enough room in the public areas of the library. Digitizing the books should give access to the books to everyone and make it easier to find historic information from them.

I, for one, am quite excited about the idea. Since the books will be available for free online, it means us historians from abroad can easily access the books without having to fly to London to do so.

For more information, the BBC has an interesting video about it and The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about it.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Source: Wikipedia

As most of my readers probably know, I am a huge fan of Mark Twain. The name of this blog comes from a quote he made about history and a lot of my inspiration comes from his works. The recent news of a Montgomery, Alabama-based publisher publishing a censored version of one of Twain's most famous books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is really rather sickening to me. The publisher has decided to replace the word "nigger" with "slave" as well as to replace the word "injun" with a less offensive word.

While I certainly understand that these words are not politically correct and are offensive to many in our current times, the words should not be taken out of context when it comes to the story. In Twain's time, both were acceptable words. The novel contains a story which is extremely critical of Twain's own time and racism during that time. People spoke that way in Missouri at that time. That is a fact that will absolutely never change.

I understand the arguments that they want to create a "teachable" version of the novel, but this simply furthers one of the most fundamental problems of the American education system: censorship. Parents and teachers don't want kids exposed to such things even as late as high school. The problem is that they find out on their own anyway. Isn't it better they have the proper training when they discover it rather than not know what to do with it when they run across it for the first time? The same applies to sexual abstinence versus teaching safe sex practices. But I digress.

The novel itself is an anti-slavery commentary. Twain has his main character, Huckleberry Finn, befriend a run-away black slave named Jim. Throughout the novel they share adventures and good (and bad) times. This was a revolutionary idea for the time for most people -- especially in Missouri and the south where the novel takes place.

Racism is still an extremely prevalent problem in our current society. There is no doubt about that. People like the publishers of this hacked up version of Twain's masterpiece, however, only further the problem. The way to combat racism is to teach people about it. Simply sweeping the problem under the rug so that people aren't exposed to it is not going to help anyway. In fact, it is going to make it far worse.

For more interesting commentary on the subject, visit these two sites:
CNN
The Mark Twain House & Museum

Roughing It by Mark Twain

I have a new featured book for you this week. This one is an American classic called Roughing It by Mark Twain. It is one of Mark Twain's travel books which made him famous as an author. In this book he writes about his travels throughout the Old American West, his adventures with mining, newspaper editing and with the rough folk of the Old West. Of course, he fictionalizes it quite a bit, but that adds to the entertainment value.

What I find most interesting about this book is the way in which Twain portrays the Old West. He was a contemporary who actually did spend several years in the Old 'Wild' West and, although his account is fictionalized to some degree, it still shows us how people who lived during that era saw the west or at least wanted to see the west as compared to today's highly romanticized image of it.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Source: Wikipedia

According to The Times, the British Library is currently undertaking a project to digitize their collection of more than 65,000 nineteenth century books in an effort to preserve them and make them available for free for public consumption.

The only catch is that you must own an Amazon Kindle which is something I find incredibly disappointing. I do not like the Kindle or eBook readers. I suppose the best part about it is that I can still buy regular paper copies that mimic the original books.

Here is part of the article:

MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

[...]

While the British Library books — which will include Dickens’s Bleak House, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge — will be available free online, the public will also be able to order printed copies from Amazon.

Like the onscreen versions, the paperbacks, costing £15-£20, will look like the frequently rare 19th-century editions in the library’s collection — including their typeface and illustrations. Originals of works by Austen and Dickens typically cost at least £250.

You can read the full article on The Times.

Europe in the High Middle Ages by William Chester Jordan

This week I have a new featured book called Europe in the High Middle Ages by William Chester Jordan. It is a very well-written book which details the Europe in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It covers a range of topics from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, the Crusades to monasteries, the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor, and so on.

The book is written in a manner which is easy for the casual reader to understand and follow, but academic and detailed enough to be of value to the medieval field.

The Making of Europe by Robert Bartlett

I've just begun reading a new and so far very interesting book about European conquest, colonization and cultural change in the late medieval/early middle ages period. I will be spending a significant amount of time over my break pouring through this book as it is quite interesting.

It starts off talking about the expansion of Latin Christendom from Rome throughout the rest of Western and Eastern Europe. It also discusses the spread of European aristocracy and the constant conquests and "adventures" which they pursued including the Crusades. I haven't read much further than that, but what I have read has been really fascinating.

The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson

I realized today that I haven't changed the featured book for quite a long time. So, I've changed it to another book about Native Americans called The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson. It is a fascinating history of the Native Americans that gives each region of the United States its own chapter from pre-contact with Europeans, to contact and beyond. Wilson did an excellent job writing and it was an absolute pleasure to read. I highly recommend it.

Other than that little hurdle, the cataloging process is going smoothly. It just gets somewhat redundant and tedious after a while, so I have been taking a lot of short breaks so I don't wear myself out too quickly. I still have about half of my library left to catalog and already have 73 items cataloged (not including the foreign books, of course).

Here is a widget with some of my books:

It Happened in Colorado by James A. Crutchfield

Today I ordered a new book that looked really interesting. The book is called It Happened in Colorado by James A. Crutchfield. I am originally from Colorado and so I figured a book on the history of Colorado would be an interesting read. James A. Crutchfield always writes interesting books about the history of the American west which also helped persuade me to buy the book when I found it. One of my favorite books by him is called The Way West: True Stories of the American Frontier. Part of his collection of books are a whole bunch of "It Happened in [insert state name here]" books. I might have to invest in a few more if the one I ordered was interesting.

The reasons behind this are simple: not only is the man a great humorist, but most of his books takes place in my favorite time period, the 19th century. To me, Twain provides a fascinating view on 19th century culture and life that standard textbooks or academic journals cannot even touch because he was actually there, writing stories about everyday life with the careless ease of someone who does not have to critically examine details because he has experienced the times his whole life. I think that says something that modern scholars can't even come close to because they weren't there.

Twain covers several different countries during the 19th century including the American western frontier in Roughing It, Germany, Switzerland and Italy in A Tramp Abroad and Spain, the Christian holy land and northern Africa in The Innocents Abroad. He also gives us his usually witty and smart-aleck interpretation of what's going on and of the different areas. Of course, the reader does have to take into consideration that quite a bit of each story is in fact fiction; however, the fiction was made up within the confines of Twain's 19th century mind and travels.

For those of you who are interested in reading some of Mark Twain's collection, I recommend the following two books:

Roughing It by Mark Twain

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

They are by far my favorite as they deal with my two favorite parts of the world: the American western frontier and German-speaking Europe. They also, needless to say, take place in the mid-19th century.

For more books I recommend from Mark Twain, visit the fiction section of the History Rhymes store.