Asimov! Doyle! Woolf! Williams! McLuhan! Hubble! Matthews! Poe! New Acquisitions / Winter 2012!

The following books are the most recent acquisitions to the Personal Libraries Library, all accessioned into the Robert Smithson Collection:

The Bloodstream: River of Life by Isaac Asimov
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (also in the Borges Collection)

Also included is this spectacular volume of Kora in Hell: Improvisations by William Carlos Williams.  This is part of the Pocket Poet Series (No.7 in fact) published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books in San Francisco.  Everything about this book is splendid.  Everything.

The Realm of the Nebulae by Edwin Hubble and Mazes & Labyrinths by W.H. Matthews begin a dialogue from the onset.  Once inside, Hubble takes you to a "Group of Nebulae (NGC 3185, 3187, 3190, 3193)" that is found in the constellation Leo.

And to "Messier 33," a late-type style nebula, seen above.  Below is a tomb found in Knossos, in the shape of a "double axe" from Mazes & Labyrinths.  These continue the conversation.

For any questions about the Library, Collections or books, please contact the Librarian at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com.

Openings (and New Aqcuisitions, April 2011)

One cannot travel anywhere in the back country of the United States, especially west of the Great Plains, without being impressed by the many evidences of old mines showing grayly on the flanks of ragged mountains and crumbling ghost towns wrapped in sage and silence at the ends of long abandoned dirt roads.

-first sentence from A Range Guide to Mines and Minerals by Jay Ellis Ransom


In addition to the incredible A Range Guide to Mines and Minerals from Smithson's Personal Library, new March/April acquisitions include:

Learning and Language: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Calvino Personal Library)

Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Mitchell Personal Library)

Culture & Anarchy by Matthew Arnold (Smithson Personal Library)

Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century by J.L.E. Dreyer (Smithson Personal Library)


The Complete Poetry of William Blake (Borges Personal Library)
and
Selected Prose, Poetry, and Eureka by Edgar Allan Poe (Calvino Personal Library)


It is with humility really unassumed--it is with a sentiment even of awe--that I pen the opening sentence of this work; for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn--the most comprehensive--the most difficult--the most august.

-first sentence from Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka: An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe