In honor of Bastille Day, we’re thinking about the idea of revolution and all the ways that authors have defined it throughout history.

We asked our expert NYPL staff to name their favorite books about revolution—literal or figurative, for young and old readers alike. 

Close to Home

No Crystal Stair by Nelson Vaunda Micheaux. Mostly set in Harlem, this is a touching biographical story reflecting a literary revolution that also points to the Black Nationalist Movement. —Nicola McDonald, Jerome Park

I’m a romance reader, so when I discovered Donna Thorland’s American Revolution-set Renegades of the Revolution historical romance series, I got excited. They’re a trilogy of loosely connected novels depicting the adventures of female spies during the American Revolution. In Turncoat, a sensible Quaker woman is turned into a rebel spy in 1777 Philadelphia; in Mistress Firebrand, an actress and rebel in 1777 British-occupied New York becomes a writer of seditious plays; and in The Rebel Pirate, a British naval captain in 1775 Boston finds himself held hostage aboard a rebel privateer, by an enigmatic woman. Perfect for fans of Outlander and author Phillipa Gregory. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street

Apropos of this topic, I have written two blog posts—one for adult readers and one for young readers—on books about the American revolution, which is my favorite historical period. Of the ones I wrote about, The Fifth of March and Finishing Becca by Ann Rinaldi are my favorites. —Ronni Krasnow, Morningside Heights

Far from Home

I’d like to recommend everything written by the Soviet dissident writer Victor Serge, but his novel Midnight in the Centuryin particular. In 1933, Serge was arrested by Stalin’s police force—again. He was subsequently held in solitary confinement for 85 days. Then he was exiled to Orenburg for two years. And then he wrote Midnight in the Century, a short political thriller inspired by the author’s own experiences with the Russian Revolution and its afterbirth. In Chenor, a community in Stalin’s shadow, exiles carry on. They hide, some literally and others in plain sight, and hope. One of my favorite novels, with one of my favorite final sections ever. —Chad Felix, Social Media

Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People is a really interesting take on an impending revolution. Written a few years before the end of apartheid in South Africa, this novel depicts Johannesburg amidst a violent race war. The plot is all about a white family that moves to its trusted servant’s native village to stay safe. It’s effectively Gordimer’s prediction of how apartheid would finally be dismantled (revolution!), and contains a host of really sharp examinations of race, privilege, family, and politics. —Nancy Aravecz, Mid-Manhattan

I liked Coup de Grâce, Marguerite Yourcenar’s cold-country hothouse story of doomed love in a doomed society, set among German aristocrats about to be uprooted from their ancestral homes in the Baltic lands in the chaotic period of civil war following the Russian Revolution. —Kathie Coblentz, Special Collections

Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun brilliantly depicts the Nigerian Civil War. And is a must-read in general. —Danita Nichols, Inwood

One of my favorite books, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, has the French Revolution as a culminating event. A very appropriate Bastille Day read! —Katrina Ortega, Hamilton Grange

Graphic Novels

John Lewis’ wonderful graphic novels March (books one and two) are about the civil rights movement—an ongoing socio-political revolution. —Caitlyn Colman-McGaw, Young Adult Programming

Civil War: A Marvel Comics Event. An unfair law turns friend against friend and hero against hero. Who is right? —Brian Baer, Mulberry Street

As far as revolutions in fiction works go, Alan Moore’s graphic novel V for Vendetta readily comes to mind. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market

Children & Young Adult

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future is about a lot of things, but let’s focus on the revolution that Glory will lead in the future, when women’s rights are curtailed by a totalitarian regime. How does she gain the ability to see what has yet come to pass? Why, one day she drinks a cocktail of mummified bat mixed with beer, granting her magical powers. —Charlie Radin, Inwood

Coming from a YA perspective, I am a huge fan of the dystopian “revolutions” such as the Divergent series by Veronica Roth or the classic 1984 by George Orwell. For revolutions for a younger audience, how about Harry Potter? ​—Dawn Collins, Wakefield

Of course this list needs to include Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games. —Danita Nichols, Inwood

A tale of brothers pitted against each other as a new nation fights for freedom against an unjust, oppressive kingdom. James Lincoln Collier’s Newbery Honor Book, My Brother Sam Is Dead, is an engaging narrative about the American Revolution and how it affects one family, two brother, and finally an entire nation. This is historical fiction at its finest, to be read by adults and children—great for a family read or included on a school summer reading list. —Karen Ginman, Selection Team
 

Also hanging out with the American Revolution gang was Johnny Tremain, an apprentice at Paul Revere’s silversmithy. Since we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act this month, it should be noted that Esther Forbes’ book details the disability of the title character’s hand and the accommodations that he could and couldn’t make at work and for his role in the Revolutionary War. —Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Exhibitions

Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution. A touching, mind-bending tale of Andi, a Brooklyn teen and gifted musician grieving the loss of her younger brother, who spends her winter break in Paris and finds the French Revolution-set diary of Alexandrine, the nanny to the doomed son of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The stories run parallel to each other until providence, art, science and a bit of time travel bring them together. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street

Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War. As a teen reader, it was such an eye-opener that noncompliance can be its own form of sedition, and that this type of revolution—seemingly so quiet and small at first—can be so subversive and become so powerful. —Amie Wright, MyLibraryNYC
 

True Stories

You say you want a revolution? Okay, you got it. I am currently reading Destruction Was My Beatrice by Jed Rasula, which is a survey of the birth of the Dada movement and how it upended the art world in the early 20^th century and eventually left its mark on surrealism, pop art, and performance art. Why was Dada revolutionary? Simply put, it was anti-art. Hugo Ball, a father of Dada, perhaps put it best in a 1918 manifesto: “In principle I am against manifestos—as I am against principles.” —Wayne Roylance, Selection Team

Rape culture is endemic on college campuses around the country. Jon Krakauer’s Missoula, an exhaustive feat of journalism, is a deep dive into its cause via a few cases in one college town. I listened to the audiobook a month ago and can’t stop thinking about it. ​I want to believe it’s about a revolution that’s just about to happen. —Gwen Glazer, Readers Services

Fantasy & Sci-fi

Promise of Blood by Brian McLellan. It’s a flintlock fantasy taking place during the aftermath of a palace coup in a setting reminiscent of Revolutionary France. The magic practiced by powder mages uses gunpowder to improve reflexes, aim the perfect shot, etc. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil

Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings: this Asian-inspired fantasy novel tells the story of two men who become friends through revolt and who turn on each other when the Revolution is won. —Brian Baer, Mulberry Street

Thieftaker, D.B. Jackson’s take on magic in Boston immediately prior to the American Revolution. Ethan Kaille is a thieftaker (a precursor to the modern bounty hunter) and a conjurer, hired by a prominent family to retrieve its murdered daughter’s necklace. Kaille encounters Revolutionary figures, such as Samuel Adams, in his pursuit of the necklace and the killer. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil

Frank Herbert’s Dune books: classic science-fiction at its best. Young Paul Atreides embraces his destiny after his family’s destruction and ends up transforming the galaxy. —Brian Baer, Mulberry Street

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your choices! Leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.

The front-end team in the Digital Experience department encourages testing the code we write so we can deploy quality applications. We just published our third AngularJS app and plan to use React.js for our future projects. Our latest app, Staff Profiles, highlights NYPL staff experts and it resembles the Research Division app. But, the biggest difference is how we read the data coming from the API. The back-end team is now using the JSONAPI specification for building APIs, which we call the Refinery, and we have enjoyed its modularity and ease of use when reading data.

Our previous approach to calling and reading the NYPL Locations API was custom and specific to the endpoints that were being served through the API. As the JSONAPI site says, the specification is an "anti-bikeshedding weapon" which means we can focus less on the format of the API and focus more on building apps. Since we were building the Staff Profiles app in AngularJS we then created the Parserinator, an AngularJS module to read JSONAPI formatted APIs. This post will focus on setting up any AngularJS module's environment for unit testing, adding mocked data, setting up coverage for the source code, and using ES6 for the source and unit tests. A follow up post will focus on unit testing techniques and patterns.

For brevity, some code was omitted in the Gists in this post, but you can find the full source on Github. The module is stable but still in development so pull requests, feedback, and issues are welcomed!

Set Up

We are using Karma to run our code for testing, Jasmine for the testing framework, and Gulp to automate the testing task. In the module repository, we need to create a package.json file to store the dependencies we need through NPM (Node Package Manager). Now we can install the development dependencies with the following command:

npm install karma jasmine-core gulp --save-dev

We use Gulp to automate multiple tasks and decided to use it to run the Karma runner as well. Setting up a Gulp task is simple and the following setup assumes that the Karma configuration file lives in the /test directory.

Now we can run gulp test in the terminal to see the results of our unit tests.

Karma Configuration

The Gulp task we set up will read the Karma configuration file that will load the files needed for the tests to run. We want to load the AngularJS source file, the angular-mocks plugin which allows us to use the $httpBackend feature in the ngMocks module, the source file, the unit test file, and any other dependencies that the module requires.

We can also load mocked data, frameworks, plugins, reporters, and preprocessors in this configuration file. Check out the complete file on Github.

Mocked Data

With help from the karma-jasmine-jquery plugin, we can load mocked data through JSON files. After setting up the directory where the mocked data lives, we include it in the Karma configuration as a file:

{ pattern: 'test/mock/*.json', watched: true, served: true, included: false }.

In the unit tests, you can obtain the data by calling the `jasmine.getJSONFixtures()` function and assigning fixturesPath to the path where all the mocked files live. Make sure to add 'base' to the front of the directory or else the files won't be read.

This helped us out tremendously because we were able to write more readable unit tests by removing unnecessary mocked data in the file. We can now just import the data in a fashion that resembles requiring NPM packages or ES6 imports.

HTML Preprocessor

The Parserinator module does not contain AngularJS directives but we do have directives that we test in other NYPL AngularJS apps. To test them, we use the karma-ng-html2js-preprocessor plugin which converts a directive's HTML into a module. The module gets loaded in the unit test and the AngularJS app won't have to fetch the directive from the server, which usually cases problems when running unit tests.

Run `npm install karma-ng-html2js-preprocessor --save-dev` to install the plugin and then load it in the Karma configuration:

In the example above, the HTML files live in the /public/scripts/directives/templates directory. We need to load this directory through the 'ng-html2js' preprocessor and assign it a module name. We named the module 'directiveTemplates' and it can be loaded in the unit tests through the module function.

Coverage

The front-end team loosely follows a test-driven development approach; we write tests before we write code but we usually write a lot of code while we build new features and modules. The best way that we have found to keep track of untested lines of code is by using the karma-coverage plugin that tells us how much of our code is tested, or covered. This includes different inputs to our functions, different scenarios and branches for logic workflow, and basic error handling.

After installing the module it needs to be added to the configuration so that it knows what file should be processed.

The results are available when opening up the `../test/coverage/browserName/index.html` file where 'browserName' is the folder name of the browser running the unit test. The result tells us what lines of code still need to be tested, what logic statements are unreachable, what functions have been tested, and more.

ES6

ECMAScript 6 (ES6) is awesome and we are starting to integrate it into our workflow. The benefits of using ES6 are numerous and we have noticed better, cleaner, and more readable code ever since we've switched. We just touched the surface with ES6 and AngularJS but all our future React.js projects will be written in ES6. We are currently using Babel for the ES6 compiler.

When writing the Parserinator, we decided to use ES6 to show an example of an AngularJS module written in ES6, to figure out a workflow for compiling ES6, and to learn its syntax.

There are two separate tasks related to ES6. The first one is compiling the source from ES6 to ES5 (which browsers can read) to use in AngularJS apps. The second task is compiling the source and the unit tests when Karma runs.

Install Babel through npm:

npm install gulp-babel karma-babel-preprocessor --save-dev

The Gulp task for for compiling the source to distribute looks like this:

To load Babel in Karma, we need to configure the karma.conf.js file. We need to include the NPM module in the plugins array and include what files need to be processed by Babel in the preprocess option.

Now can now enjoy the benefits of writing a module's source and unit tests in ES6. This step is optional but we highly recommend using ES6 when writing Javascript.

We now have an AngularJS module with an environment that is ready for unit testing, along with setting up a coverage tool, a compiler process, and a way to easily include mocked data. A follow up post will focus on writing unit tests in ES6 using Jasmine as the testing framework.

Here are the  bestselling fiction titles from the New York Times for the week of July 19, 2015. If you are among the thousands who read and enjoyed these books, and you want to repeat that feeling of suspense or romance, here are a few read alikes to keep you going. Enjoy!

#1 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed Grey by E.L. James, more novels about sexual dominance and submission:

The Lover  by Marguerite Duras

Henry and June  by Anais Nin

The Key  by Junʼichirō Tanizaki

#2 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed The English Spy by Daniel Silva, more art theft real and imagined:

Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist by Stephen Kurkjian

Unbecomingby Rebecca Scherm

Foreign Gods, Inc.by Okey Ndibe

#3 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, more suspense novels told from multiple perspectives:

And Then There Was One by Patricia Gussin

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The Son by Jo Nesbø

#4 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed A New Hope by Robyn Carr, more small town romances:

Welcome to Temptationby Jennifer Crusie

Major Pettigrew’s Last Standby Helen Simonson

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcottby Kelly O’Connor McNees

#5 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, more titles with blind protagonists.

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow

How to Paint a Dead Manby Sarah Hall

What I Lovedby Siri Hustvedt

On July 16, 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was published for the first time. Since then, the book has sold over 65 million copies and become one of the most cherished books in American letters for its sandpaper ache and brisk-stepping prose. Today, as we celebrate The Catcher in the Rye, we're reading some of the best writing on its author J.D. Salinger.

To access articles held in our subscription databases, first authenticate with your library card number through the NYPL website, then click on the permalink in the article title.

"The Salinger Affair" by Julian Barnes
London Review of Books October 27, 1988
Following the publication of Ian Hamilton's In Search of J.D. Salinger, Julian Barnes (yes, that Julian Barnes) considers what happens when a literary biographer is refused access to the author and his letters and the biographer, like some "ethically-aware thief," imposes even more boundaries on his research. Barnes suggests that Hamilton uses himself as a placeholder for Salinger without ever revealing much emotional valence. Is Hamilton a "gumshoe," as the biographer believes? No, Barnes, declares. Hamilton is just a man "badger-hunting with an umbrella."

"The Man in the Glass House" by Ron Rosenbaum
Esquire June 1997 (via EBSCOhost)
In 1953, Salinger moved from Manhattan to Cornish, NH. Writer Ron Rosenbaum dares to dream — or at least, make the unannounced pilgrimage to the author's home — and finds himself standing at the edge of a Granite State property, where he meditates Salinger's "Wall of Silence" to near religious effect. After all, as Don DeLillo writes in Mao II, "When a writer doesn't show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God's famous reluctance to appear."

"(Fashionaby) Spurious" by Joan Didion
The National Review November 18, 1961 (via Literature Resource Center)
For unapologetic nerds, it can be fun to imagine what would happen should two revered writers meet. What would happen if Barry Hannah met Janet Malcolm? What would happen in Vladimir Nabokov met Sylvia Plath? Joan Didion didn't, as far as we know, meet Salinger. However this is what happened when she met his Franny and Zooey: Didion wrote, "However brilliantly rendered (and it is), however hauntingly right in the rhythm of its dialogue (and it is), Franny and Zooey is finally spurious, and what makes it spurious is Salinger's tendency to flatter the essential triviality within each of his readers, his predilection for giving instructions for living. What gives the book its extremely potent appeal is precisely that it is self-help copy: it emerges finally as Positive Thinking for the upper middle classes, as Double Your Energy and Live Without Fatigue for Sarah Lawrence girls."

"Betraying Salinger" by Roger Lathbury
New York Magazine  April 12, 2010 (via Academic One File)
In 1997, a small press called Orchises was to publish Salinger's novella Hapworth 16, 1924. It would be the author's first publication since the 1960s. In this mea culpa, publisher Roger Lathbury explains how the book went from a pipe dream to a near-reality before Salinger retreated into silence once more. 

"Holden Caulfield's Goddamn War" by Kenneth Slawenski
Vanity Fair February 2011
Salinger the Recluse is in image familiar to readers and non-readers alike, but what fewer consider is the image of Salinger at war. Slawenski draws up D-Day, the time Salinger and Hemingway drank champagne in Hürtgen, and how the war changed the character Holden Caulfield from his original iteration in “Slight Rebellion off Madison." "Holden comes to realize he can enter adulthood without becoming false and sacrificing his values;" Slawenski concludes, "Salinger came to accept that knowledge of evil did not ensure damnation." 

"Salinger Would Make Holden Caulfield Puke" by Alan Scherstuhl
Village Voice September 4, 2013  
Following the release of Shane Salerno's documentary Salinger, skewering the film became something of a bookish sporting event. Scherstuhl resists the urge to use the word "phony," unlike some of his more relentless peers, instead describing the reenactments in all their mawkish failure.

We are thrilled to bring Imagination Academy back to the 67th Street Library!  This year, our two wonderful high school interns/aspiring authors, Emily Imbarrato and Rosie Shewnarain, will be summarizing the events.

The 4^th Annual Imagination Academy began on Tuesday, July 7, at the 67th Street Library. It is a four week program in which the branch hosts 12 different authors. Aspiring young writers aged 8-13 come to the library to meet published authors and to gain writing help and inspiration from them. This takes place every Tuesday through Thursday for 4 weeks.

To start off this four week program we had Nancy Krulik join us. Nancy is the author of the popular series Katie Kazoo, Magic Bone, and George Brown, Class Clown. In this series, Katie has a really bad day and ends up making a wish on a shooting star that she could be anyone but herself.  Nancy mentioned to the kids that as a writer you can pretend to be anyone that you want and in doing so, you become the character in which you are writing about. The participants began to create their own characters and brought them to life. They gave the characters feelings and even created scenes in an acting exercise. Sian and Sydney made a hilarious scene between a daughter that would explode if she did not have a cupcake and a mother who stood her ground and said no! Nancy also shared that she once dreamed of being on stage, but even though she did not become an actress, the classes she took helped her improve on her characterization skills. The kids left that day with their own characters in mind and soon enough, they will have their own stories!

On Wednesday, Rachel Vail, who wrote the very relatable and humorous series Justin Case, shared her experience as a writer. She went to school to become a spy but ended up switching to an arts and theater school. One of the writing exercises that the group did was a finish the sentence quiz for their characters.

I am…
I don’t…
Nobody knows…
I wish…

And so on.

After this, using the same method the kids created an antagonist; this character that gets in the way of the main character. For Momoca, whose main character is a chair, the antagonist would be the chair owner who is trying to get rid of the chair in a yard sale! After these writing exercises, Ms. Vail explained to the kids that when writing stories you start with a first draft. It IS NOT going to be perfect, and when your story does not follow the path you meant for it to go, don’t get angry! Use the method ETHU and ease the heck up! Just continue writing.

The last author of this week was Liz Summit who talked to the kids about superhero science. Liz is an adventurer who wrote many articles and is currently working on a science themed middle grade novel. We started off the day with a presentation on non-fiction vs. science fiction. We learned about the ‘oyster gardens’ being planted in the Hudson River and did you know that you can see humpback whales here in New York?!! She also told us about her many exciting eco-adventures—like rebuilding coral reefs in Florida—and how they helped to inspire some parts of her story. Then the kids went off and started to create their own superheroes and sci-fi stories. These stories went from heroes that have crazy hair and super speed, to conflicts between elephants and cheetahs.

Can’t wait to see what next week brings!

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Here’s some new poetry for kids
That adults might like too.

Salsaby Jorge Argueta
Half poem and half recipe, this picture book in English and Spanish takes kids through gathering and preparing tomatoes, limes, garlic, and other delicious ingredients. (If you’re still hungry for poetry, try Argueta’s earlier cooking-related books: Guacamole, Tamalitos and Sopa de Frijoles.)

(Ages 4-8.)

Something Sure Smells Around Here by Brian P. Cleary
“There once was a man from Nantucket” can step aside: The 26 limericks in this book are funny, punny, and perfectly appropriate for kids.

(Ages 6-12.)

Won Ton and Chopstick by Lee Wardlaw
This sweet story of a cat dealing with a new puppy is told entirely in haiku form:

“Some parts of 'woof' I
will never understand. But…
practice makes purrfect.”

(Ages 4-8.)

The Golden Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
The queen of children’s books is back, more than 60 years after her death, with a newly republished collection that had been out of print for decades. These 17 poems and stories all center on rabbits, accompanied by sweet illustrations of fluffy woodland critters.

(All ages.)

The Death of the Hat, compiled by Paul Janeczko
A moth, a peach blossom, a candle, a haunted palace… this anthology traces the history of poetry through 50 archetypal objects.

(Ages 8-12.)

Changes: A Child’s First Poetry Collection by Charlotte Zolotow
Several decades of Zolotow’s work are represented here, with dozens of classic poems about nature in every season.

(All ages.)

Hypnotize a Tiger by Calef Brown
Brown’s bold black-and-white drawings complement his bold poetry in this new collection that’s perfect for fans of Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky.

(Ages 6-12.)

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your choices! Leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.

On Monday, July 27 at 5 pm, Morningside Heights will host the first of our Lincoln Center Local screenings.  This program brings the best of Lincoln Center's recorded programs to our library.  We will begin with a screening of One Singular Sensation: Celebrating Marvin Hamlisch.  In this program, Broadway luminaries such as Audra McDonald and Kelli O'Hara join the New York Philharmonic to celebrate the life and work of one of America's most popular composers. Hamlisch wrote the music for A Chorus Line, They're Playing Our Song and Sweet Smell of Sucess on Broadway, and also wrote many movie scores and songs, including "The Way We Were".

The series will continue on Monday, August 24, with a screening of Unsung Carolyn Leigh.  Leigh is best known as a frequent collaborator of Cy  Coleman, and lyricist of such classic hits as "Hey, Look Me Over" and "The Best is Yet to Come."  But this American Songbook evening focuses on some lesser known songs, including some from an unproduced musical version of The Great Gatsby.  Performers include Donna Bullock, Adam Kantor and Erin Davie.

Please join us for as we welcome Lincoln Center to our neighborhood.

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One was so clever, quick, and packed full of ’80s references that—dare we say it—some people like it even better than The Hunger Games. The dystopian tale of Wade, a gamer on a quest to find an invaluable Easter egg in the virtual reality most of the world lives in most of the time, read like a video game itself.

Cline’s second novel, Armada, was just released, and it’s one of the most anticipated YA books of the summer. So, go put it on hold, and then come back and check out five other gamer books.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson
T’Rain—the world-wide, popular MMORG at the center of Stephenson’s crazy romp—sparked a computer virus that, in turn, sparked a diplomatic crisis threatening the entire globe.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow
In Doctorow’s version of the future, armies of teens work for pennies in terrible conditions inside gigantic, all-pervasive MMORGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). What happens when they decide to band together and unionize?

Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky
It’s not exactly a video game, but the Digital School all students must attend in 2060—when it’s too dangerous for teens to leave their houses—is the ultimate virtual reality, and Maddie’s father invented it. But when she ventures into the physical world, Maddie recognizes the price everyone pays for living online.

Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde
Grace’s older sister abandons the real world and disappears into the sparkly virtual reality of a princess video game—and Grace goes in after her.

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
MMORGS lead 14-year-old Tom straight to World War III in this fast-paced thriller about real-life technology springing from the virtual world.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your picks! Leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.

Nele Mayer, a student at NYU, was recently awarded the H.W. Janson scholarship for excellence in the field of art history. This blog post is derived from her work in Shelley Rice’s class "Aesthetic History of Photography."

In ca. 1863 French photographer Etienne Carjat took a Woodburytype photograph of poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire, who described photography in “The Salon of 1859” as “art’s most mortal enemy.” Baudelaire’s head is in focus, while the edges of the portrait are softened. He is wearing a dark coat with a white shirt and a large silk bow tie that dominates the image. His facial expression is stern. He appears to be glaring out of this picture, defiant and critical of the world. Why does a man, who believed that photography contributed to the “impoverishment of the French genius” let himself be photographed and therefore share his image with the world?

Carjat’s photograph of Baudelaire was part of a series called “Galerie Contemporaine” of 241 photographs depicting celebrated political, literary and artistic figures of the Second Empire in France. The portraits were made by 28 photographers who had studios in Paris at the time. Etienne Carjat, who started his artistic career as a cartoonist and opened his first photographic studio in 1861, founded several weekly periodicals through which he met celebrities and friends whose portraits he took, including the one of Baudelaire.

Baudelaire was uneasy about considering photography as anything other than a “humble servant to the sciences and art." His skepticism was not solely directed towards photography but also the industrial age in general. In the eyes of Baudelaire, 19^th century France witnessed the end of the social and cultural system that had given “real art” room to prosper. However, even though he did not consider photography art, he still had his photograph taken many times in his life—perhaps because he wanted to be remembered. With cartes-de-visite in the 1860s, photography directly influenced the public career of celebrities.

The need to make your image public and to share it with the world is directly connected with the idea of “sharing” in the Public Eyeexhibition at The New York Public Library, where Carjat’s portrait of Baudelaire finds its place in the Crowdsourcing section. In the context of this exhibition Carjat’s portrait of Baudelaire could be seen as a social artifact whose main goal is communication. However, as an invaluable work by a famous photographer of a celebrated poet, its significance shifts from a social artifact to an aesthetic object—a work of art.

Carjat captured an expressive face that is not only aesthetically beautiful but communicates something about the poet. The whole question and tension of whether photography is art or not is inherently embedded in Carjat’s photograph of Baudelaire. Even though this photograph definitely has aesthetic value, one should also not forget with what intentions the photographer and the sitter entered this project. Their main goal seemed not to have been to create art, but rather to share this person and that moment in time with a broad audience.

MPower Energy will present a  recruitment on Tuesday, July 21, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm, for Deregulation Energy Consultant (10 openings) at the New York State Department of Labor, 9 Bond Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

Enrollment Now Open! SAGEWorks Boot Camp. This two-week long, intensive training course will provide participants with essential skills to lead them toward job placement. The first session starts on Monday–Friday, from August 10 to August 21, 9:30 a.m.–2 p.m. Participants must attend every day at the SAGE Center, 305 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10001.  SAGEWorks assists people 40 years and older in learning relevant, cutting-edge  job search skills in a LGBT–friendly environment.

SAGEWorks Workshop - Transgender in the Workplace, on  Tuesday, July 21, 2015, 6- 8 pm,  at LGBT Center, 208 W. 13th Street Room 310, New York, NY 10001.

Fedcap Rehabilitation Services, Inc. will present a recruitment on Wednesday, July 22, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm, for Case Manager (12 openings),  Intake Specialist (4 openings),  Retention Specialist (1 opening),  WEP Supervisor (1 opening)  at the Bronx Workforce 1 Career Center, 400 E. Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458.

New York Life Insurance Company will present a recruitment on Friday,  July 24, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm, for Financial Services Professionals (5 openings) at Flushing  Workforce 1 Career Center, 138-60 Barclay Avenue, 2nd Floor, Flushing, NY 11355. 

Apprenticeship Opportunities in New York  City.         

The New York City Employment and Training Coalition (NYCE&TC) is an association of 200 community-based organizations, educational institutions, and labor unions that annually provide job training and employment services to over 750,000 New Yorkers, including welfare recipients, unemployed workers, low-wage workers, at-risk youth, the formerly incarcerated, immigrants and the mentally and physically disabled. View NYCE&TC Job Listings.

Digital NYC is the official online hub of the New York City startup and technology ecosystem, bringing together every company,  startup, investor, event, job, class, blog, video, workplace, accelerator, incubator, resource, and organization in the five boroughs. Search  jobs by category on this site.

St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development provides Free Job Training and Educational Programs in Environmental Response and Remediation Tec (ERRT). Commercial Driver's License, Pest Control Technician Training (PCT), Employment Search and Prep Training and Job Placement, Earn Benefits and Career Path Center. For information and assistance, please visit St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development or call 718-302-2057 ext. 202. 

Brooklyn Workforce Innovations helps jobless and working poor New Yorkers establish careers in sectors that offer good wages and opportunities for advancement. Currently, BWI offers free job training programs in four industries: commercial driving, telecommunications cable installation, TV and film production, and skilled woodworking.  

CMP (formerly Chinatown Manpower Project) in lower Manhattan is now recruiting for a free training in Quickbooks,  Basic Accounting, and Excel. This training is open to anyone who is receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Class runs for eight weeks, followed by one-on-one meetings with a job developer. CMP also provides Free Home Health Aide Training for bilingual English/Cantonese speakers who are receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Training runs Mondays through Fridays for six weeks and includes test prep and taking the HHA certification exam. Students learn about direct care techniques such as taking vital signs and assisting with personal hygiene and nutrition. For more information for the above two training programs, email: info@cmpny.org, call 212-571-1690, or visit. CMP also provides tuition-based healthcare and business trainings free to students who are entitled to ACCESS funding.

On July 18, 1937, Hunter S. Thompson shot out into the world. Were he alive today, no doubt he'd celebrate with roguish delinquency somewhere between fun and terrifying. We'll indulge in the closest revelry possible. In honor of the Gonzo journalist dressed in sleeves full of tricks and outlandishly trumpeting prose, we're looking back at some of Thompson's finest nonfiction.

To access articles held in our subscription databases, first authenticate with your library card number through the NYPL website, then click on the permalink in the article title.

"The Motorcycle Gang" by Hunter S. Thompson
The Nation May 17, 1965
Before Sons of Anarchy, there was Hunter S. Thompson's take on The Hell's Angels. Far better crafted and less lurid than SOA, Thompson's article is perhaps more interested in the Attorney General's hit job on the motorcycle club than the MC's alleged crimes. 

"He was a Crook" by Hunter S. Thompson
Rolling Stone June 16, 1994 (via EBSCOhost)
You know that aphorism, "Don't pour salt on a wound"? Well you could say, "He was a Crook" is pouring salt on a dead man, one Richard Nixon. "Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives—whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him," Thompson writes. "This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit." 

"Fear and Loathing in Hollywood" by Hunter S. Thompson
Time November 10, 1997 (via EBSCOhost)
Before Hunter S. Thompson was a writer, he was a copyboy. And then one day, he was a writer who published in that very magazine. Take heed, aspiring young (and un-young except at heart) writers! But that is digression. The point: in '97 Thompson wrote about taking Johnny Depp's car for a spin. "You bet, bubba, I was taking care of business," he writes. "It  was  like  the  Too  Much  Fun  Club."

"The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" by Hunter S. Thompson
Scanlan's Monthly 1970
Some call "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" the seminal work of Gonzo journalism. When Thompson goes to the Derby, he spends a good deal of time lying through his teeth, drinking, and getting into trouble. In other words, this is classic Thompson. 

"Hey Rube! I love you." by Hunter S. Thompson
Rolling Stone May 13, 1999 (via EBSCOhost)
It's Sunday night, and Hunter S. Thompson writes a love letter. Naturally, there are plenty of loops through gun-toting, arrests, and hallucination. With rascally turns throughout, Thompson approximates something like an impressionistic biography or self-made character sketch. 

In the 2013Best American Essays edited by Cheryl Strayed, one of the essays ("Sometimes a Romantic Notion" from Gettysburg Review by Richard Schmitt), talks about running away with the circus and how no one ever calmly joins the circus, it's always a run. This got me thinking about titles whose main characters join the circus or which focus on circuses in some way. 

Fiction

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough
"A novelization of the sensational life of the early twentieth-century female circus tiger trainer finds her reexamining her life, from her stint as a burlesque dancer after her escape from a mental institution to her five marriages and the devastating loss of her cats." Unrelated fun factoid: Actor Christopher Walken had a stint as a lion-tamer early on in his career.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Goodreads list Circus/Carnival books

Nonfiction

The Circus, 1870s-1950s by Noel Daniel.
This book is massive, but highly rated. Includes little-known circus images by Stanley Kubrick and Charles and Ray Eames.

NYPL Digital Collections has numerous images of circuses from the Billy Rose Theatre Collection photograph file.

During the blustery winter months we crave hot chocolate or a bowl of hot soup. During the sizzling summer months, it's ice tea, lemonade or thirst-quenching, hunger-quenching, nourishing gazpacho soup we want.

Gazpacho is a cold, uncooked vegetable or fruit soup made with water, moistened bread, tomatoes, red or green peppers, onions, cucumbers, garlic, fruit such as melon, with salt, oil and vinegar added. It was traditionally made by pounding garlic cloves and soaked stale bread into a bowl (dornillo). Water and cut vegetables or fruit and especially ripe tomatoes were then added, making for a refreshingly cool meal enjoyed by harvesters working under the hot summer sun. Today, though, the ingredients are usually poured into a blender or a food processor to make a smooth or chunky textured soup

Gazpacho has a long history. Roman soldiers would carry dried bread, garlic, vinegar, salt and olive oil to make an early form of the soup. But it was in Andalucia in southern Spain that gazpacho became popularized. From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Spain had been controlled by Ottomans and Moors from Morocco. Entering Spain, these Arabic people brought with them Apo Blanco, a white soup made with bread, almonds, garlic, vinegar, olive oil and salt. With the discovery of America and the conquest of Mexico, peppers and tomatoes from the Andes were introduced into Southern Spain. The red peppers and tomatoes gave gazpacho its characteristic red color.

Gazpacho soup is not only red but can be white or even green, depending upon locality and ingredients used. Red gazpacho will contain tomatoes while white gazpacho will contain dried fruits such as peeled almonds. Green gazpacho contains added spices and green vegetables and herbs. Varieties of gazpacho soup, therefore, truly abound. In Cordoba, for example, red gazpacho is a thick, creamy soup made without water but with ripe tomatoes added to the basic ingredients of bread, garlic, oil, vinegar and salt. Garnishments such as chopped almonds and cumin might be added. Interestingly, variations of gazpacho soup within Cordoba and within each of Andalusia's provinces exist, differing in ingredients used as well as texture and consistency. In fact, individual families within a community might prepare gazpacho soup differently from each other, adding various vegetables, fruits, meats and garnishments to the common basic ingredients.

Whatever the ingredients, gazpacho is a healthy soup rich in minerals, antioxidants, fiber and in vitamins C, A and E. Red tomatoes, for example, are high in carotenoids such as lycopene and beta-carotene, antioxidants that can prevent prostate cancer, high blood pressure and eye problems. Other brightly-colored fruits and vegetables used in preparing gazpacho soup also contain carotenoids which may serve as anti-inflammatory agents.

Gazpacho, once relegated to southern Spain, is now a widely popular soup, refreshing in the hot summer months, but also enjoyable in the cold winter months—that is, when eaten indoors. Although best tasting in the summer months when tomatoes are most ripe and most flavorful, it surely is a soup for all seasons.

For more information on the history of gazpacho soup along with various recipes for its preparation, a Google search will yield fine results. In The New York Public Library's online catalog, checking under the subject SOUPS will reveal many books under the call number 641.813. Although none of these books are entirely on gazpacho soup, most of them will have information on its history along with recipes. One can also check the subject COOKING, SPANISH which will reveal many titles under the call number 641.5946. Some fine examples are:

• Soup of the Day: 150 Delicious and Comforting Recipes from Our Favorite Restaurants, by Ellen Brown
• The Cuisines of Spain: Exploring Regional Home Cooking, by Teresa Barrenechea
• The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden

Many databases can yield journal articles on gazpacho soup, its history and its health benefits. Try EBSCOhost, a database that offers general as well as scholarly articles on gazpacho soup. A popular Spanish refrain: "De gazpacho no hay empacho" (One can never have too much of a good thing.)

Katie Rain Hill was born as Luke. However, she never felt like a boy. She wanted female genitalia, and she wanted to be a woman. Her body was biologically male, but she produced much more estrogen than testosterone. Kids in school teased her mercilessly, and she contemplated taking her own life at the age of eight years. She left high school because the atmosphere was so bad, and she enrolled in a virtual high school.

A very bright, talented person, Katie finally found hope with the Openarms Youth Project in Tulsa, OK. There, she found support by adults and teens in the gay community. She investigated gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy. She began dressing as a female and using the female restroom.

Katie became a spokesperson for the transgender community, and she has been honored with a youth leadership award. Katie is an inspiration for everyone, whatever their sexuality and gender orientation.

Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition by Katie Rain Hill, 2014

This is one of the most fascinating books that I have read. I have not known any transgender people well, and this book elucidated the topic. I loved reading such a poignant memoir that was written by a wonderful individual.

• Books about transgender people
• Gay Center in NYC
• National Center for Transgender Equality
• Trans Advocacy Network

I love all books by Dr. Seuss. Here are a few of my favorite quotes: 

“A book is just like life and anything can change”  From One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

“So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!”  From One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

“ASAP. Whatever that means. It must mean, 'Act swiftly awesome pachyderm!”  From Horton Hears a Who!

“Don't give up! I believe in you all. A person's a person, no matter how small! And you very small persons will not have to die. If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!”  From Fox in Socks

 “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  From Happy Birthday to You!

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”  From Oh, The Places You'll Go!

 “It's not about what it is, it's about what it can become.”  From The Lorax

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!” FromHow the Grinch Stole Christmas!

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.” From The Lorax

“You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.” I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

“The more that you read, The more things you will know. The more that you learn, The more places you’ll go” From I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one-hundred percent!”  From  Horton Hatches the Egg

“I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.” From  The Cat in the Hat

“Kid, you'll move mountains.”  From Oh, The Places You'll Go!

 “We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive. Virtually every page is a cliff-hanger—you've got to force them to turn it.”  Saturday Evening Post, October 23, 1965

Like many other libraries and historical societies, The New York Public Library is in the process of digitizing sizable portions of its manuscript collections. In addition to making it easier for scholars to access these sources, there is a general hope that digitization will make it possible for students to use manuscript materials in a classroom setting. But what, exactly, do we hope students will gain from using digital manuscript sources when plenty of transcribed, published, and annotated primary source readers already exist?

To learn about how everyday life worked in a given period, there really is no substitute for manuscript sources. Even their seemingly insignificant quirks often turn out to be significant details. This is especially true of business records. NYPL has recently digitized two items—the letterbook of the Gouverneur and Kemble mercantile firm, from 1796 to 1798, and the Lewis Ogden’s letterbook, from 1787 to 1798—both of which make clear both the virtues of manuscript sources and the importance of manuscript digitization.

Letterbooks were the hard drives of their day. Businessmen and merchants—like Lewis Ogden, Isaac and Samuel Gouverneur, and Peter Kemble—used letterbooks to keep records of their business transactions. Between placing orders with other business, regulating their supply chain, and corresponding with their agents, businesses generate piles of mail. When a merchant sent a letter in the eighteenth century, there was no carbon copy, or digital copy in an email sent folder. So merchants copied down their outgoing correspondence into letterbooks. (The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has written a useful guide and glossary of early American business records). Businessmen and merchants were not the only people to use this tool. Anyone who corresponded frequently—politicians, lawyers, printers, and intellectuals, among others—needed a letterbook in order to simply keep track of their correspondence, of what they said and when they said it.

That these books exist in the particular form and structure that they do explains a great deal about how trade actually worked in the late-eighteenth century. Take indexes as an example. The physical volume that Gouverneur and Kemble bought to use as a letterbook came with dedicated pages for an index with cut tabs.

Each tab had two letters printed or stamped on it, one for each side of the sheet of paper. Gouverneur and Kemble used their index to keep track of the recipients of the letters collected in their dense, over 600-page letterbook, which they amassed during a short two-year period. Lewis Ogden’s letterbook has a similar index section, only with four handwritten letters per tab. Ogden did not use the index of his comparatively manageable, 150-page letterbook as intended, though he did copy a few letters into those pages.

An index is often the most utilitarian and, consequently, the least exciting part of a book. In manuscript letterbooks and account books, though, they are a defining feature. Indexes are a critical clue for making sense of how merchants used letter books and why. That blank letterbooks came with a pre-made index is evidence suggests that there was demand for this feature, which in turn testifies to common record-keeping practices among merchants and businessmen. And indexes offer very basic clues to how merchants managed their network of customers, suppliers, and partners.

Reproducing letterbook indexes in a printed book is basically impossible to do in any useful or practical way. So a handwritten index is just the sort of thing that often gets left out of a published edition of letters. Removing the index from a letterbook, though, makes it impossible as a coherent artifact and obscures some of the more fundamental insights we can glean from these kinds of sources.

Digitizing letterbooks will allow us, in the future, to link directly from the index to the specific pages in the volume. Through computers, students and scholars will be able to use these letterbooks as their authors would have and interact with the 18th century global business world. Students can learn a great deal about the economy, business practices, and record keeping in early America—which are not necessarily the most exciting topics—by working with a single letterbook. What’s more, they can get all of this by working with primary sources, but without having to struggle through the complicated and lengthy correspondence generated during any individual business transaction. Indeed, the physical layout of a letterbook may reveal even more about the most basic realities of how business was conducted in early America than the letters it contains and the transactions documented. Therein lies the pedagogical value of digitizing these sorts of sources in full. Doing so preserves the structure of letterbooks. And this is the reason that scholars, teachers, and students alike will want to access letterbooks in their digital format.

About the Early Manuscripts Project

With support from the The Polonsky Foundation, The New York Public Library is currently digitizing upwards of 50,000 pages of historic early American manuscript material. The Early American Manuscripts Project will allow students, researchers, and the general public to revisit major political events of the era from new perspectives and to explore currents of everyday social, cultural, and economic life in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. The project will present on-line for the first time high quality facsimiles of key documents from America’s Founding, including the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Drawing on the full breadth of the Library’s manuscript collections, it will also make widely available less well-known manuscript sources, including business papers of Atlantic merchants, diaries of people ranging from elite New York women to Christian Indian preachers, and organizational records of voluntary associations and philanthropic organizations. Over the next two years, this trove of manuscript sources, previously available only at the Library, will be made freely available through nypl.org.

If you are among the many who read and enjoyed one of these titles and are looking to repeat that headlong rush to the end or feeling of falling in love with a character, here are a few read alikes to keep you going. Enjoy!

#1 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed Grey by E.L. James, more novels about sexual dominance and submission:

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

Henry and June by Anais Nin

The Key by Junʼichirō Tanizaki

#2 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, more suspense novels told from multiple perspectives:

And Then There Was One by Patricia Gussin

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The Son by Jo Nesbø

#3 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed Nemesis by Catherine Coulter, more FBI suspense thrillers:

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson

Prayerby Philip Kerr

The True American by Anand Giridharadas

#4 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed Code of Conduct by Brad Thor, some enduring American political thrillers (all made into great films):

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

All the President’s Men by by Carl Bernstein

#5 Recommendations for readers who enjoyed Earth Bound by Christine Feehan, more romantic suspense:

Apostlesby Shelley Coriell

In Death by J.D. Robb

Black Ops, Inc. by Cindy Gerard

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your picks! Tell us what you'd recommend: Leave a comment or email us. 

Picture it: The year is 1933, and you need a new coat! Chances are, you'd be headed to Hearn's. This department store, located on 14th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues from 1879 until 1955, was a New York shopping mecca.  

I recently found these full page Hearn's ads in 1933 issues of The Villager, which we've recently started to digitize at Jefferson Market. So far, April 1933-April 1959 is available to search in our basement reading room!

I have always been a fan of linked stories and non-linear plot lines that converge in that most satisfying way. In this same non-traditional narrative vein, I also enjoy a book composed of multiple narrators. There are some fine examples of this narrative structure in middle grade books. The form speaks to these readers and may help grow empathy as they learn to navigate the complex social structure that is middle school. Here are a few to consider.

Schooled by Gordon Korman

Chap has been homeschooled all his 13 years on an isolated "alternate farm commune." When his grandmother takes ill he must face public middle school. Can a pure heart and immeasurable patience win out? The story is told from multiple points of view, adding depth to even the most unsympathetic characters. 

Because of Mr. Teruptby Rob Buyea

An inspiring and unconventional new teacher affects the lives of seven students. Buyea finds an authentic voice for each.

The View from Saturdayby E.L. Konigsburg

Four sixth graders are chosen to represent their school in an academic bowl. It is a mystery why these four students in particular where chosen to make up the team. Four short stories follow that unravel a web of surprising interconnections.

Wonderstruckby Brian Selznick

Ben and Rose are both hearing-impaired. Ben is 12 in 1977 and Rose is the same age 50 years earlier. Both children run away to Manhattan seeking something from their absent parents. It takes several hundred pages of prose and gorgeous pictures to connect the strands, but it is very satisfying when you do.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Palacio switches narrators every few chapters, authentically capturing the voices of grade school boys and girls and teenagers and parents. This formula culminates in a circle of love around the main character and while he will never be "ordinary" in the way he longs to be at the beginning of the book, by the end we feel confident he has a strong bench of love and humor that will help him to forge his way in the world.

The Candymakersby Wendy Mass

Four 12-year-olds enter a candy-making contest. Logan’s parents own the candy factory and he lives there. He narrates first, then the arc rewinds to tell the tale of the other contestants.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your picks! Tell us what you'd recommend: Leave a comment or email us. 

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As then-editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger published NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden and made reporting on Wikileaks a cornerstone of the newspaper's coverage. He is also the author of three children's books and the recent Play it Again: Why Amateurs Should Attempt the Impossible.  On this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Alan Rusbridger discussing whistleblowers and Wikileaks.

Prior to speaking with Paul Holdengraber at LIVE from the NYPL, Rusbridger looked through the Library's New York Times archives. Rusbridger compared the Times' publication of the Pentagon Papers to the publication of documents leaked by Edward Snowden:

"It was just remarkable reading the correspondence around the very, very brave stance that the New York Times took in 1972 over the publication of the Pentagon Papers, because it mirrors so much the internal discussions and the challenges that we have had over the Snowden material, which I think is a comparable publishing event and now including the New York Times, and that was done in the face of, you know, real government menace and criminal menace and it was a very brave thing to do so it was moving to see these letters laid forth about the spirit of teamwork and the public importance of what the Times was doing then... At the most basic level it’s a vast spill of secrets, and the Snowden spill of secrets is bigger than the Pentagon Papers, I mean it’s a—and in a sense it’s about a matter of I think equally high public importance. Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, has said as much himself, because it’s about, to me it’s about very profound things about the nature of potentially putting entire populations under a form of surveillance, it’s about everybody in this room who believes they are secure in using the Internet for banking or their medical records or for e-mail and the degree to which that is a well-based trust, which takes you into very profound questions about the integrity of the Internet itself, and there are so many issues of balancing privacy and security that are engaged by this archive of material that it feels to me a very, very important matter, which is why the public debate in this country has been so welcome."

Although Rusbridger acted as editor-in-chief during Wikileaks, he credits reporter Nick Davies with spotting and conveying the importance of Wikileaks:

"Well, a very brilliant reporter on the Guardian Nick Davies who did the phone hacking story, which was a three-year, very lonely story and his theory is that the most important stories in a newspaper are never on the front page. I think this betrays a basic contempt for editors that’s probably well merited. He believes editors can’t spot interesting stories, and on page seven of the Guardian one day he spotted a story that he thought was, should have been the front-page splash. Which was it was a man on the run with an enormous leak which then was the biggest leak of material from inside the U.S. government/military and he couldn’t understand why nobody was interested in the fact that this man was out there with a backpack on his shoulders, so he tracked him down and persuaded him that he should give the material to the Guardian."

While clear on his position that prosecuting whistleblowers is antithetical to the United States' values, Rusbridger also praised American First Amendment protections, especially in comparison to those in other countries. The First Amendment was, in fact, one reason that Rusbridger wished to involve the New York Times in major document leak stories:

"There are extremely high protection for free speech in this country, you know, the First Amendment, in a written constitution, and I know that the journalists in the room deplore certain things that Obama has done about pursuing whistleblowers, and I deplore those, too, but nevertheless there are very great protections for free speech in this country. And what we did with Wikileaks was by insisting that the New York Times came in, because I thought we would be prevented from publishing it in the UK as we were with Edward Snowden. I wanted to get the New York Times involved in order to have, in order to root this material in the highest standards of free speech, and I do think that’s a really interesting model for the future. If you live in China, Iran, in Turkey at the moment, where journalists are having real problems, in Russia, and we know that we would welcome whistleblowers in these countries and that would be important and using the Guardian as a hinge to publish that material but with very high protection I think is a terribly important model for the future."

You can subscribe to the New York Public Library Podcast to hear more conversations with wonderful artists, writers, and intellectuals. Join the conversation today!