Special Collections & Archives Banner

You are here

Peek in the Stacks: united states

America First: Variations on a Theme

"America First" is a phrase that's been uttered with increased frequency over the past year. Under the current presidential administration, the phrase is used to describe a group of policies focused on American interests and American national security, with an emphasis on defeating terror groups, strengthening the US military, building diplomatic relationships, and....

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries

The Jesse James Adventure Series Collection

Jesse James is one of the most infamous American outlaws of the nineteenth century Wild West. Beginning in 1866 and based in Missouri, James and his James-Younger Gang robbed and murdered dozens of people in Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, and West Virginia. After being killed by Robert Ford in 1882, James’s fame grew among the American public. In 1907, The Arthur Westbrook Company...

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries

BOFF! THWACK! KAPOW!

Few fictional characters have caught our imaginations as much as Batman, a superhero like all of us in that he doesn’t fly and can’t jump over tall buildings. Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the Batman character, sometimes known as the Dark Knight or Caped Crusader. He first appeared in a 1939 issue of Detective Comics (DC) ...

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries

Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collections

In the history of the United States, religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment have frequently come under fire. In the 1920s, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in concert with restrictive immigration legislation, educational prohibitions, and economic scapegoating, resulted in growing anti-Semitism against Jews...

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries

On Exhibit: Japanese American Relocation Center Newspapers

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, resulted in the forced removal of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States, most of whom were US citizens. Americans of Japanese descent were ultimately incarcerated in ten camps around the US administered by the War Relocation Authority (WRA)...

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries

The Evolution of Men's Fashion

If you look up "men’s fashion" on your search engine you might see images of men wearing a combination of ripped jeans that look uncomfortably tight and ride too low, and an equally tight plaid button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, topped off with a vest that is too close to the body, unproportioned and improperly...

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries

Celebrating Culture Clash

On Tuesday, November 1st, the Valley Performing Arts Center welcomed famed comedy and theater group, Culture Clash in a one-night performance of "VOTE OR DIE LAUGHING: A Post-Modern Political Vaudeville." Special Collections and Archives is proud to be the home of the Culture Clash Collections, donated to the Library ....

Read more Peek in the Stacks blog entries