Browse the latest catalogs, newsletters, and e-lists of rare books, fine bindings, incunabula, print ephemera, and much more from the members of the ABAA below. (Also includes podcasts, blog posts, and other digital formats.) *New* indicates any catalogs brought to our attention since the early October 2024. AARDVARK BOOKS/EZRA TISHMAN BOOK APPRAISALS SABF 2024 Highlights 16 Recent Aardvarkian Acq... [more]

Rare book donations are being sought for an auction to help "turn the page" on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Helping Ukrainian Books and Booksellers (HUBB for short) is preparing an international rare book sale to support colleagues under fire in Ukraine. They have scheduled an online auction for mid-November and are actively seeking donations of rare and collectible books, manuscripts, artwork, ... [more]

ABAA-member Kenneth Gloss, an internationally known rare book specialist and appraiser who runs the Brattle Book Shop in Boston and appears on national TV, will speak at New York's Grolier Club to talk about the "improbable finds" of his decades-long career. The presentation will take place on Thursday, October 5, 6:00 pm at The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY, and is open to the p... [more]

The California International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to San Francisco in 2024! The fair will take place February 9-11 at Pier 27, a new venue located on the Embarcadero between Fisherman's Wharf and the Ferry Building. The building is well-appointed, with remarkable views of the San Francisco Bay and downtown San Francisco. There is easy access for visitors, ample parking, and nearby public ... [more]

When I hear contemporary politicians invoke Churchill, I usually feel like I'm watching King Louie, the Orangutan who wants to be a man, sing “I wanna be like you” in the 1967 Disney version of The Jungle Book. “You!” sings King Louie, “I wanna be like you I wanna talk like you Walk like you, too” Yeah. Not so much. If you happen to draw a comparison between King Louis and another loud... [more]

After sixty-two years in the field of historical letters and manuscripts, Kenneth W. Rendell still feels just as excited as he was when, many years ago, a friend showed him a handwritten letter of George Washington. He couldn't believe it then and still feels "overwhelmed and honored" to collect what he regards as "pieces of human history." This past year, Rendell established two endowed annual le... [more]

Longtime ABAA member Robert “Bob” Petrilla of Roosevelt, NJ passed away at his home on September 1, 2020. Petrilla started in the book business in 1970 as he operated two open shops in Bucks County, PA. In 1981, he began selling books through the R & A Petrilla catalogues, and then online. Bob Petrilla first became a member of the ABAA in early 80's and reinstated his membership in 2014. Petri... [more]

In 1995, longtime ABAA-member Ben Kinmont started the Antinomian Press. His focus was (and has remained) on project art, both by others and himself. Sometimes, the Press has published exhibition catalogs on artist ephemera and alternative artistic practices; at other times, Kinmont has used it as a teaching tool in the classroom to publish his collaborative projects with students. The Antinomian P... [more]

ABAA-member Weller Book Works turns 90! Anniversary celebration for the Salt Lake institution, Saturday, August 17, from 4 - 6 PM! Who'd have thought a small used bookstore founded two months before the 1929 stock market crash would grow into one of the West's premier bookstores? Weller Book Works survived the Great Depression, World War II, a catastrophic fire (1971), big box chain stores, and th... [more]

I was thrilled recently to learn, via John Windle, of the philanthropic activities of ABAA member Phillip Pirages and his wife Ellen Summerfield. The couple formed the Give a Little Foundation in 2007 with the mission to provide assistance to individuals and families in Yamhill County, Oregon who are experiencing financial adversity and to alleviate hardship and enhance the quality of life of thos... [more]

ABAA-member Claudia Strauss-Schulson, her son Todd and daughter Caren, have written a book -- Scrawl: An A to Z of Famous Doodles -- based on the extensive collection of illustrated letters and sketches built by the late David Schulson, founder of David Schulson Autographs, Ltd. (now Schulson Autographs). We asked the three Strauss-Schulsons to tell us about the book and the collection on which it... [more]

Longtime ABAA member John J. DeMarco of Saratoga Springs, NY passed away on March 26, 2019. He was 70, and was being treated for cancer. His store, Lyrical Ballad — which DeMarco opened after graduating from college in 1971 and ran with his wife Janice — has been a fixture in Saratoga Springs for almost 50 years, and is “hog heaven for a book lover,” according to fellow ABAA member Kevin M... [more]

ABAA-member Frank S. Klein passed away at his home on January 12, 2019. Obituary: Upon graduation from Cuyahoga Falls High School during World War II, Frank was drafted into the Army. Following his discharge he enrolled at Kent State University where he excelled not only scholastically but also athletically as an outstanding tackle on their varsity football team. Frank, with other Kent students, f... [more]

The Thomas Mann House has paired up with ABAA-members Brad and Jennifer Johnson of Johnson Rare Books & Archives in Covina, California, to recreate the author's personal library during the years he spent in California. This informative video details the exciting project... We asked Dr. Nikolai Blaumer, Program Director of the Thomas Mann House, about this ambitious project: ABAA: What happened Tho... [more]

Longtime ABAA member Kenneth Karmiole continues to support research in the history of the book through a new endowed fellowship at the University of California Los Angeles' Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies & William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Karmiole is a graduate of UCLA, and has supported the university with several contributions over the years. From The UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th... [more]

Owen Kubik, a long-time ABAA member from Dayton Ohio, knew it was too good to be true when he discovered a cache of 16th- and 17th-century books in a bulk shipment of used books. Kubik regularly buys large lots of old books from thrift store recyclers. The books are gathered from thrift stores across the country — which either don't want to handle used books in their stores or have too many — ... [more]

ABAA-member Kenneth Karmiole has endowed a new research fellowship at his alma mater, the University of California Santa Barbara. This is the second endowment Karmiole has established at UCSB, the first supports the purchase of rare books. Karmiole says that university libraries are becoming increasingly valuable resources, because “Old bookstores are closing left and right, so universities are ... [more]

ABAA-member Raymond Smith has an exhibition of his black-and-white photography, "In Time We Shall Know Ourselves" running at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT through June 3, 2018. Inspired by the photographs taken in the American South in the 1930s by Walker Evans, a teacher and mentor of Smith at Yale University, as well as by Robert Frank's The Americans (1958), in the summer of 1974 Smith emba... [more]

Meet the latest members of the ABAA. Andrea Peacock, Elk River Books Andrea Peacock is an author and former newspaper journalist who took up bookselling when she and her husband built a new house and didn't have enough room for all their books. She teamed up with Marc Beaudin and in 2011 launched Elk River Books, an open shop in the small town of Livingston, Montana, which sits along the big bend ... [more]

I've been a full-time antiquarian bookseller for over two years now, specializing in selling original materials that tell interesting American stories, with an emphasis on social movements. So my every day involves intellectual adventure as I make a living helping to preserve bits of history. Until the first week of January though, I hadn't quite experienced anything like I'm about to share, so wi... [more]

Love old books, book stores, or just a good story? Tune in to Brattle Book Shop's well-produced podcast: BRATTLECAST! At one of America's oldest bookshops, there are just as many stories to be told outside the pages as in them. Join bookseller Kenneth Gloss and co-host Jordan Rich as they share entertaining conversations and histories surrounding Brattle Book Shop, one of Boston's favorite spots f... [more]

I met Helen in 1998, while I was still an undergrad living in Washington, DC. I was dating her son and invited to New York to meet the family during a Passover seder, a holiday I had never observed. David warned me that his mother could be opinionated, was intelligent, and very well read. We immediately bonded over our mutual enjoyment of a made-for-TV movie starring Lynda Carter we had both just ... [more]

Longtime ABAA-member William Dailey died suddenly last month. His former wife and business partner Victoria Dailey has written an obituary, and his friends and colleagues John Windle and Stephen Gertz supplied touching memorials for him online, which we reprint with premission below: Obituary: I first met Bill in 1972 when he manned the front desk at Zetilin & Ver Brugge. I was early for an appoin... [more]

We first learned that Jack Hanrahan died from his friends Rusty and Veta Mott, who wrote to us, "It is with sadness that we yet again pass along the news of the death of a wonderful friend and colleague. Jack Hanrahan, of Wells, Maine, died at 7:30 last night, age 85. Jack, a long time member of ABAA, was a man who contributed to the world not only as an antiquarian bookseller, but as a Milton sch... [more]

We mourn the passing of Ed Glaser, who died on July 31, 2017 at 88 years old. He was universally cherished for his humor, wisdom, ethics and generosity, and he was part of the book trade and its culture until his dying days. Ed started out in business in the mid 1960s, quoting books found in thrift shops to want lists in AB-Bookman's Weekly. By 1969 he had quit his full time job and opened up a la... [more]

“Three columns of unknown verse by the Mad Poet of Broadway: Life is good.” (A brief remembrance of Robert Fraker from Garrett Scott, May 3, 2017.) I probably met Robert Fraker of Savoy Books sometime in the mid-1990s, though later neither of us could ever remember when exactly it happened. It must have been some February back when I worked for John Crichton at the Brick Row Book Shop in San F... [more]

ABAA member Tom Nealon (Pazzo Books) specializes in early printed books and cookbooks, and has drawn on his knowledge of these areas to write a book on the history of food and its vital influence on the course of human history, Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste. In this brief introduction, Tom Nealon explains what drew him to early cookbooks and food is connected with arcane ... [more]

Autograph expert and ABAA-member Gary Combs died last month. A celebration of his life will be held in New York City on March 7, as many of his former colleagues will be in the city for the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. ABAA-member James Camner paid tribute to his late friend and colleague: It is with deep sadness that I am reporting the death of my dear friend and colleague Gary Combs who died ... [more]

Bernard M. Rosenthal was born in 1920 in Munich. Most of his immediate family left Munich for Florence in 1933, left Italy for France in 1938, and arrived in the US in 1939, each move in response to the problem of being Jewish. Both sides of his family, the Rosenthals and on his mother's side, the Olschkis of Italy, were heavily involved in the book trade going back generations as antiquarians, pr... [more]

Bookseller Ed Smith (Ed Smith Books) interviewed Kurt Brokaw, a professor and film critic, who likes to moonlight as a rare bookseller (specializing in noir paperback originals) on the streets of Manhattan. I got to know Kurt Brokaw through a mutual friend. When I was in Manhattan for a movie memorabilia auction at Bonham's that I'd partly consigned, I stopped at his weekend table of 1940s paperba... [more]