April 2026 Acquisitions

Books:

Brian Michael Bendis, Goldfish, 2022.

Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, Harley Quinn: Wild at Heart, 2025.

Anthony O'Hear and Judy Groves, Introducing Jesus: A Graphic Guide, 2015.

Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, 1899, 1964.

Movies:

Big Bad Mama/Big Bad Mama II, 1999.

Earth Girls Are Easy, 1988.

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, 1975.

Lethal Ladies 2, 1999.

M, 1931.

Music:

Bangs and Talbot, Smokin' Aces, 2026.

British Electric Foundation, Music Of Quality And Distinction Volume One, 1982, 1991.

DJ Quik, Platnium & Gold Collection, 2004.

Dr Feelgood, Sneakin' Suspicion, 1977, 2025.

Hot Chocolate, An Introduction to Hot Chocolate, 2017.

Sly and the Family Stone, The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967, 2025.

Smothers Brothers, Sibling Revelry: The Best of the Smothers Brothers, 1988.

Steve White Trio, Soul Drums, 2026.

"Robber Baron Tactics and Imperial Belligerence"

"Mainstream political coverage has largely overlooked the deep affinities between the McKinley and Trump models of governance, thanks in no small part to the American press's inattention to the basics of political economy, not to mention its endemic historical illiteracy. More than that, though, Trump's cultish regard for McKinley gives the lie to the corporate media's central narrative about Trump and the MAGA movement—that it's a populist insurgency aimed at toppling sinister networks of elite influence."

Chris Lehman at The Nation compares Donald Trump to William McKinley.

And Michael Tomasky at The New Republic calls Trump an 1870s Redemptionist.

"A Seminal Moment in the History of Higher Education"

"In the years after Ross's dismissal, Lovejoy—one of the professors who had resigned from Stanford and ultimately went to Johns Hopkins University—teamed with John Dewey of Columbia University to establish an organization aimed at ensuring academic freedom for faculty. In 1915 the newly formed American Association of University Professors released its 'Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure.' Among other things, the declaration noted: 'Official action relating to reappointments and refusals of reappointment should be taken only with the advice and consent of some board or committee representative of the faculty.'"

In a 2015 Stanford Magazine article, Brian Eule recounts the story of Professor Edward Alsworth Ross.

April 2022 Acquisitions

Books: 
David Avallone et al, Elvira: The Shape of Elvira, 2019. 
Brian Azzarello et al, Jonny Double, 2002. 
Ed Brubaker et al, Cruel Summer, 2022. 
Ed Brubaker et al, Incognito, 2009. 
Ed Brubaker et al, Incognito: Bad Influences, 2011.
Ed Brubaker et al, A Reckless Book: The Ghost in You, 2022. 
Ed Brubaker et al, Sleeper. Vol.1: Out in the Cold, 2004. 
Ed Brubaker et al, Sleeper, Vol. 2: All False Moves, 2004. 
Ed Brubaker et al, Sleeper: Season 2, 2009.
Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602, 2004. 
Larry Kirwan, Liverpool Fantasy: A Novel, 2003. 
Stan Lee et al, Marvel-Verse: Black Widow, 2020.
David Lewman, Before the Batman, 2022. 
Stephanie Phillips et al, We Only Kill Each Other, 2022. 
Mick Rock, Debbie Harry & Blondie: Picture This, 2019. 
Cynthia Von Buhler, Minky Woodcock: The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini, 2018. 
Cynthia Von Buhler, Minky Woodcock: The Girl Who Electrified Tesla, 2021. 
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891.

Movies:
Candy, 1968.
Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021.

Music: 
Arcade Fire, Arcade Fire, 2003. 
Fontaines D.C., Skinty Fia, 2022. 
Franz Ferdinand, Hits to the Head, 2022. 
Gun Club, Fire of Love, 1981. 
Khruangbin and Leon Bridges, Texas Sun, 2020. 
Rex Orange County, Who Cares?, 2022. 
Romantics, Playlist: The Very Best of the Romantics, 2011. 
Spiritualized, Everything Was Beautiful, 2022. 
Untouchables, Decade of Dance: Live, 1990. 
Weather Station, How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars, 2022.
Wet Leg, Wet Leg, 2022.

"Let's Find Out Why"

"The English language provides a great many solid choices for someone wishing to describe a leader who plays on mob psychology or racial intolerance. 'Demagogue' is an obvious one, but there are others—'nationalist,' 'nativist,' 'racist,' or 'fascist,' to name a few. They are serviceable words, all of them. In the feverish climate of the Democracy Scare, however, none of those will work: 'populist' is the word we are instructed to use. 'Populists' are the ones we must suppress."

Thomas Frank at Harper's Magazine looks at the original Populists compared to how the description is used today.

"How Some People in the Middle and Upper Classes of the Gilded Age Regarded the Poor"

"These occasions allowed rich and middle-class people to dress down and enjoy it. Linscott's suggested invitation included rules for party garb: 'Every womin what kums must ware a Poverty dress and apern, er something ekelly erpropriate, an leave her poodle dorg to hum.' (I know, this stuff is hard to read. But these invitations are such interesting ephemeral examples of the Gilded Age's passion for the use of 'humorous,' 'colorful' dialect in literature; I must include it.)"

Rebecca Onion at Slate discusses nineteenth-century "poverty parties."

"Complex, Unstandardized, and Vulnerable to Corruption"

"In the 19^th-century viva voce system, people went to local polling places and swore an oath that they were voting in good faith. Then, out loud and in front of anyone who cared to cluster around observing, the voter told the election judges his choices. The counting took place by hand; judges entered voter choices in poll books, keeping running totals of numbers of votes for each candidate. There were no paper ballots to tally.

"In other locations, 19^th-century voters used paper ballots issued by parties—a practice that became increasingly common as the century went on. Voters brought their own ballots to the polls, and although they could write their choices on pieces of paper, parties found that providing printed ballots with the names of their candidates was a convenience that nudged voters toward voting 'straight ticket.' Parties printed their tickets on colored paper, and the ballots went into glass boxes, so that anyone observing a vote could clearly see which party a voter had chosen. The atmosphere at the polls was raucous, and party members lobbied for voters’ favor right up to the moment when they arrived at the ballot box."

Rebecca Onion in Slate looks at the changing voting processes in the nineteenth century.

And she notes that the "first congratulatory telegram" between candidates was in 1896.

"An Unexpected Historical Parallel"

"Both men joined their economic ideas to a cultural message that appalled and frightened their political opponents. Bryan disdained the new urban America: 'Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.' Bryan led a party that defined and applied its Jeffersonian ideals for white people only. Trump—well, we all know about that."

David Frum in The Wall Street Journal compares Donald Trump to William Jennings Bryan.

"Citizens of the United States and of the State Wherein They Reside"

"Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by six other justices. Gray argued that common-law doctrine held that a person became a citizen by virtue of jus soli, his birth in the United States, rather than his blood line. 'The right of citizenship [in the United States] never descends in the legal sense, either by the common law, or under the common naturalization acts. It is incident to birth in the country, or it is given personally by statute.'
"In other words, even though Wong's parents were 'subjects of the Emperor of China,' non-citizens, and indeed not eligible to become U.S. citizens, at birth he became a citizen of the United States."

Erika Lee in The New York Daily News looks back to the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States.

"It Wasn’t Always about the Hot Dogs"

"It’s all hard to imagine now. Not the bit about financial crisis and wage cuts—that’s going on all around us. Not the bit about the state serving the interests of the wealthy—look at who got bailed out, and who didn’t, after our latter-day version of the Panic of 1893. No, what’s unimaginable now is that Congress would unanimously offer even an empty gesture of support for workers’ dignity. For the fact is that many of today’s politicians can’t even bring themselves to fake respect for ordinary working Americans."

Paul Krugman in The New York Times discusses conservative disregard for labor.

"The Government Should Not Support the People"

"But the misery of his countrymen and women did nothing to shake Cleveland’s laissez-faire convictions. He refused to support any relief measure and instead urged Congress to reaffirm the gold standard, which he thought would lead inflation-wary businessmen to start hiring again. In 1894, when railroad workers stopped trains around the country in a sympathy boycott, Cleveland dispatched the U.S. Army to break the strike and persuaded a court to put the leaders of the protest in jail. His job, Cleveland might have said, was 'not to worry about those people.' After all, he would 'never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.'"

At The New Republic, Michael Kazin compares Mitt Romney to Grover Cleveland.

And in Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan compares Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan.

"Before There Was Rudy Giuliani, There Was Teddy Roosevelt"

"The reason Roosevelt’s quest was doomed, this account makes clear, is that New Yorkers—then and now—like their vices neat. Sure, they did not favor police and political corruption, but they would not stand for the abridgment of their pleasures, even if the consequence was police and Tammany Hall graft.

"Into that impossible contradiction barged Roosevelt, possessed of enormous intellect, physical courage and vaulting confidence, but also cursed with the relentlessness of a true believer and a thick streak of prudishness."

In The New York Times, Joseph Berger reviews Richard Zacks's Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York.

"Till Selfish Gain No Longer Stain/ The Banner of the Free!"

"The lyrics were written in 1894 by the Massachusetts poet Katharine Lee Bates, an ardent feminist and lesbian who was deeply disillusioned by the greed and excess of the Gilded Age.
"Her original third verse was an expression of that anger."

David Firestone at The New York Times warns Mitt Romney away from quoting "America the Beautiful" in campaign speeches.

"Their Welfare Is Our Welfare"

"The author doesn't emphasize his book's contemporary resonances, but he doesn't need to. They're evident when he summarizes public support for the roundup of anarchists: 'This … was no time for civil liberties. The very fabric of their society was at risk.' Miller's depiction of national liberation movements supported only when they served the United States' commercial and strategic interests doesn't seem outdated as we consider our government's various responses to the ongoing uprisings in the Middle East. The argument that business works best when left to its own unregulated devices has not gone out of fashion. Terrorism remains the weapon of the furious and powerless."

In the Los Angeles Times, Wendy Smith reviews Scott Miller's The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century.

Some Men Worked while Others Snored

"A second tragedy in the immediate background of the 1892 Columbus celebration took place in New Orleans. There, on March 14, 1891–only 10 weeks after the Wounded Knee Massacre–11 Italians were lynched in prison by a mob led by prominent Louisiana politicians. A trial for the murder of the New Orleans police chief had ended in mistrials for three of the Italians and the acquittal of the others who were brought to trial. Unhappy with the verdict and spurred on by fear of the 'Mafia' (a word that had only recently entered American usage), civic leaders organized an assault on the prison to put the Italians to death. This episode was also troubling to the U.S. Government. These were legally innocent men who had been killed. But Italians were not very popular, and even Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that he thought the New Orleans Italians 'got what they deserved.' A grand jury was summoned, but no one was charged with a crime. President Harrison, who would proclaim the Columbus holiday the following year, was genuinely saddened by the case, and over the objections of some members of congress he paid reparations to the Italian government for the deaths of its citizens."

William J. Connell in The American Scholar defends Columbus Day.

Give 'Em Hell, Barry?

"Richard Hofstadter pointed out years ago that a 'paranoid style' and populism march hand in hand. Hence, the outlandish charges of 'socialism' and 'death panels' from today's populist right. Take, for example, one of Palin's more famous remarks about Obama: 'I'm not going to call him a socialist. But as Joe the Plumber has suggested, in fact he came right out and said it, it sounds like socialism to him. And he speaks for so many Americans who are quite concerned now after hearing finally what Barack Obama's true intentions are with his tax and economic plan.'
"Translation: The people, yes, and damn the facts."

Kevin Mattson in The American Prospect warns against liberals embracing populism.

And he inspires a wave of responses.

"The Soundtrack of Working-Class Life, Sadly, Remains the Same"

"The overt class conflict of the late ’70s ended a while ago. Workers have learned to internalize and mask powerlessness, but the internal frustration and struggle remain. Any questions about quality of work life, the animating issue of 1970s unrest, have long since disappeared—despite the flat-lining of wages in the decades since. Today the concerns of the working class have less space in our civic imagination than at any time since the Industrial Revolution."

Jefferson Cowie discusses labor and the 1970s in The New York Times.

Brendan I. Koerner explains the origins of Labor Day in Slate.

And Joan Walsh interviews Cowie in Salon and prints President Obama's Labor Day speech.

Boxed In

"Finkelstein uses a simple graphic device to show his Republican candidates, geographically, just how differentiated the country is. Put a pen point on Washington, D.C., and draw your way across a map of the continental United States, edging up between Iowa and Nebraska, running through the Dakotas and Montana, dropping down through Washington and Oregon and along the western border of Nevada into California, and then heading back east, with the tips of Texas and Florida south of the line. The box that results leaves you with two different political countries."

In a 1998 Atlantic Monthly article, Christopher Caldwell warns that the Republican Party faces decline if it becomes dominated by Southerners.

"Communitarian Populism"

"There are no pitchforks in this populism. No 'self-serving and undemocratic' elites. They're just part of the same America. And yet, there is, in both the language and policies, a deep and profound commitment to 'ordinary Americans,' to their security and their chance to get ahead. And while the attack on Wall Street is muted, the sense that it has obligations beyond short-term profits is loud.
"This inclusive, communitarian populism is characterized by few enemies and very little talk of 'rights.'"

Mark Schmitt in The American Prospect explores Barack Obama's old-school progressive rhetoric.

Things Older than John McCain

"During an interview Thursday with USA TODAY, McCain also made it clear that he would emphasize his steadiness and experience—particularly on national security issues—to counter the vibrancy and oratory skills that have made Obama a sensation on the campaign trail.
"'I believe that people are interested very much in substance,' McCain said. 'If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president.'"

In an interview with David Jackson in USA Today, John McCain positions himself as the twenty-first-century William McKinley.