News

Selected stories from the Beinecke Library, YaleNews, and external media outlets (the latter noted by source in parentheses after title of article).

  • The U.S. hid Hiroshima’s human suffering. Then John Hersey went to Japan. (Washington Post)

    August 6, 2020

    In the fall of 1945, a few months after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, New Yorker writer John Hersey went to lunch with his editor, the legendary William Shawn, to discuss story ideas. One of them would change the world. Hersey and Shawn suspected that the U.S. government’s wartime propaganda machine had covered up the human suffering of the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago this month. Pictures from Japan showed destroyed buildings and decimated neighborhoods, but little was known about the human toll, especially from radiation.

  • The Older Frederick Douglass Revealed In Yale's Newly Acquired Collection Of Family Scrapbooks (WNPR)

    July 13, 2020

    Yale historian David Blight says when he first saw a collection of family scrapbooks of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, he was astonished. Blight had been fascinated by Frederick Douglass all of his life. He’d written a book and edited autobiographies about the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day. But the scrapbooks offered new insights into Douglass’ life and eventually inspired Blight’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. The materials belonged to a collector, Dr. Walter Evans, and have recently been acquired by Yale’s Beinecke Library. Connecticut Public Radio’s Morning Edition host, Diane Orson, spoke with David Blight.

  • SAA Fellow: Michael Rush (SAA)

    July 7, 2020

    Michael Rush, assistant head of the Manuscript Unit in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, will be inducted as a 2020 Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

  • “What, To The American Slave, Is Your Fourth Of July?” (New Haven Independent)

    July 3, 2020

    Babz Rawls-Ivy, Erik Clemons, David Blight, and Walter O. Evans kept a Fourth of July tradition going — by reading Frederick Douglass’s 1852 Oration, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July.” Yale’s Beinecke Library traditionally holds a public reading of the letter on Independence Day. Due to Covid-19, this year Beinecke recorded local leaders doing the reading at the Institute Library, then put it on Youtube, in installments.

  • 25 Designers On Their Favorite American Designs (Surface)

    July 3, 2020

    “For rare books and manuscripts by Gordon Bunshaft, the Beinecke Library at Yale University has to be one of my enduring favorite examples of American design. Conceptually, materially, and visually, it’s a distilled design that exemplifies what we strive for: to find a poetic solution to every design problem. Designed as an imposing jewel box, the building shields and displays its precious contents by filtering light through a facade of marble panels, amplifying the experience of entering a magical space where one finds precious things. A marvelous example of finding the solution within the problem.” —Suchi Reddy, New York City

  • Director Edwin C. Schroeder Announces Plan to Retire in Summer 2021

    June 23, 2020

    Edwin C. (E. C.) Schroeder, director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and associate university librarian, will retire next year on August 31, 2021, at the conclusion of his current term and after more than 30 years of service with Yale University Library, beginning as a catalog librarian in 1989 and as director since 2011.

  • Celebrating Juneteenth with the Solomon Sir Jones films

    June 19, 2020

    IndieWire called Jones’ films “the most extensive film records we have of Southern and urban black life and culture at the time of rapid social and cultural change for African Americans during the 1920s, the very beginning of the Great Migration, which transformed not only black people as a whole, but America itself.”

  • Black Lives Matter

    June 10, 2020

    From University Librarian Susan Gibbons, June 9, 2020 From Beinecke Library Director Edwin C. Schroeder, June 10, 2020: Last week’s Beinecke Library e-...

  • 16th Century Playing Cards with Kathryn James (That Shakespeare Life)

    May 18, 2020

    ... we turn to Kathryn James, Curator of Early Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. She joins us today to share about the collection of 16th century playing cards in house at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library with some key insights on the economics, design, and appearance of playing cards from the life of William Shakespeare.