Peek in the Stacks: united states

As the 2024 election campaigns heat up, media are already shaping the battle of public opinion. Aggregated news sites, email, and social media now form the “public square” through which power is negotiated and exercised. The efficacy of modern communication is undeniable, although not as original as it may seem. The archives are full of examples of documentation designed to target specific populations, and to disseminate with ease from person to person in order to apply pressure in pursuit of power and justice alike—from national governments to local communities.

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...

In 1887, after Reconstruction, a black man named Robert Creecy purchased a parcel of Canebrake Plantation land in Louisiana from Florestan Waggenspauch. Creecy sold half the parcel to another buyer, while retaining ownership of the remaining land. In 1898, Creecy's son-in-law, a 25-year-old black man with indigenous ancestry named Robert Celestin, purchased the half parcel of land back...

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.....