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Peek in the Stacks: special collections

Forrest G. Houlehan and the Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a federal government relief program launched as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, during the Great Depression. It provided manual labor jobs for unemployed and unmarried men in conservation and development....  

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Hiking through the Archives with John Muir

John Muir (1838-1914) was an American nature writer and an advocate for our National Park system. Born in Scotland, he moved with his family at the age of ten to Wisconsin, where his father farmed a homestead. Muir studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin; those disciplines informed his books and magazine articles...

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HIV & AIDS, the early years in the United States

In 1981 the first case of HIV was reported in the United States. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), which left untreated can lead to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), was still a mysterious virus at the time where friends, family, and loved ones were lost in a short time span. Special Collections & Archives holds many documents and resources on the topic. With these materials we are able to able to get a glimpse into the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States and its territories.

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"Passport to Peace": European Travel After World War II

The Nathalie Furst Gittelman Travel Ephemera Collection contains ephemera documenting her experience flying to Europe in 1949 during her time as a college student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. World War II ended only four years earlier, leaving many scars on the landscape and the people that lived through the war. The official travel guides and brochures, many aimed at English-speaking audiences, provide insight into the ways travel associations and government bureaus attempted to regain travelers' trust and recreational interest in Europe after a devastating period of loss.

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Honey Recipes in the Archives

Special Collections & Archives’ Culinary Collection holds just under 700 cookbooks. In order to take a closer look at some of these unique holdings I selected a few recipes to recreate using my favorite ingredient—Honey. Honey is one of the oldest known sweets in the world. The nectar from the honey bee takes on the flavor of the flowering plants nearby and taste can vary depending on the plant.

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The Savoy Cocktail Book

When passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919 ushered in the era of Prohibition in the United States, an English bartender named Harry Craddock, who had mixed drinks at the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland, OH and the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City, left the US and returned to the UK so he continue working in his chosen profession...  

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Unknown: “Slaves of Sleep” and “The Ghoul”

In 1933, Street & Smith acquired Astounding Stories, one of the first pulp magazines to center the genre of science-fiction as its twenty-cent selling point. In the following years “John W. Campbell would join the editorial staff of Astounding Stories in September 1937, replacing F. Orlin Tremaine as editor in 1938 when Tremaine became editorial director.....

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Monster or Human? Pennyroyal’s Frankenstein

Special Collections & Archives houses a limited edition of Frankenstein that was published in 1984 by Barry Moser’s Pennyroyal Press. With only 350 copies ever printed, this version of Frankenstein is quarter bound with leather and features Barry Moser’s vivid woodcuts alongside Shelley’s original 1818 text. Included with the book is a portfolio....

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None But Lucifer

None But Lucifer by H. L. Gold and L. Sprague de Camp is a Faustian satire set in New York City during the Great Depression. It was published in the pulp fantasy magazine Unknown in September 1939. The story of None But Lucifer focuses on William Hale, a businessman who discovers that Earth is Hell and Lucifer is ruling it. Hale devises a plan to confront Lucifer in order to make a deal for power and immortality.

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"Gathering Wild Oats and Telling Stories": Ursula K. Le Guin's Literary Meals

The work of Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), despite being mostly in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, very much expresses real world concerns. One of these issues is food: who has it and who doesn’t, the environmental impact of its use and production, and, as is fitting for an author who was the child of two anthropologists, the traditions surrounding its consumption.

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