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  • Citizen Printer Exhibition Reception

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    Letterform Archive 2325 Third St Floor 4R, San Francisco, CA, United States

    Letterform Archive’s fifth gallery exhibition, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.: Citizen Printer, explores the bold language, graphic typography, and colorful layering in a wide variety of printed artifacts such as broadsides, maps, church fans, handbills and oversized posters produced throughout his career. Encompassing the evolving trajectory of Black liberation in the United States, from growing up in the ’60s during the […]

  • The Material Culture of Advertising: Treasures from the Winterthur Library’s Collection of Trade Literature

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    Zoom CA, United States

    Before Amazon, before big box stores, and even before mailboxes sagged under the weight of catalogs in the mid-20th century, customers and shop-owners alike turned to a wide variety of media to select their purchases, and to aspire to grander lifestyles. Trade cards, trade catalogs, advertising ephemera, and sales samples illuminate the art of buying, […]

  • London Strife: the Great Bookbinding Strike of 1786

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    Zoom CA, United States

    Historically, bookbinders worked for longer hours and for less pay than most artisans. In the revolutionary unease of the late eighteenth century, the London bookbinders decided to strike for a reduction in their working day. This landed the binders in trouble, with some ending up in jail. The Great Bookbinding Strike of 1786 is an […]

    $10.00

  • Reading Type Specimens: From Cicero to Spoonie Diddel, Ladies Cicerone

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    Letterform Archive 2325 Third St Floor 4R, San Francisco, CA, United States

    There is more to the texts of type specimens than the ubiquitous "Quousque tandem abutere…" of Cicero’s first oration against Catiline. Careful reading of type specimens, especially those of the nineteenth century, reveals widespread patriotism, jingoism, and cultural chauvinism; historical and literary allusions; references to topical events; wordplay, sophomoric humor, and parody; and bald self-promotion. […]

  • Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers

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    Mechanics' Institute


    Join author Jared Stearns in conversation with cinephile Jesse Hawthorne Ficks on Stearns’ new book, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers. Marilyn Chambers was the embodiment of the free-spirited Seventies, the world's most famous X-rated star, and an unappreciated talent whose work in adult films hindered her dreams of becoming a serious actress. Marilyn was […]

  • Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action

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    Zoom CA, United States

    Author Donna J. Nicol tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Claudia H. Hampton, the California State University (CSU) system’s first Black woman trustee, who later became the board’s first woman chair, and her twenty-year fight (1974–94) to increase access within the CSU for historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. Amid a growing white backlash against changes […]

  • Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong

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    Pasadena Heritage 160 N Oakland Ave, Pasadena, United States

    Set against the glittering backdrop of Los Angeles during the gin-soaked Jazz Age and the rise of Hollywood, this debut book celebrates Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star, to bring an unsung heroine to light and reclaim her place in cinema history. Before Constance Wu, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, or Lucy Liu, there […]

  • The Alcott Family — Lessons from the 19th Century

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    Zoom CA, United States

    Progressive school founder, collector and bibliophile Kent Bicknell will present on his Alcott Family Collection, winner of a recent prize from the New England-based Ticknor Society. Built around the lives and work of Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), her talented sister, the artist May Alcott Nieriker, and her parents, social worker, Abigail Alcott and progressive […]

  • American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail

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    The Book Club of California 312 Sutter Street Ste 500, San Francisco, CA, United States

    In popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. As historian Sarah Keyes illuminates, their graves ultimately became […]

  • Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California

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    Pasadena Heritage 160 N Oakland Ave, Pasadena, United States

    An essential piece in California Studies, Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California offers the first critical engagement with the vision of California’s most ambitious interpreter. While Starr’s multifaceted and polymathic vision of California offered a unique gaze—synthesizing central features, big themes, and incredible problems with the propitious golden dream—his eight-volume California Dream series, along with several other books and […]

  • A ‘Deep City’ Approach to Climate Change: The Case of Deep Oakland

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    The Book Club of California 312 Sutter Street Ste 500, San Francisco, CA, United States

    Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City, presents a seldom-attempted blend of human and geologic history, explaining the stories told by the physical landscape and detailing how the city has interacted with it. Wealth generated in the region from its geological resources―water, stone, soil and minerals―has influenced societies from the pre-contact Ohlones to the Americans […]

  • The White Whale: Moby-Dick Illustrated

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    The Book Club of California 312 Sutter Street Ste 500, San Francisco, CA, United States

    At the time of Herman Melville’s death, in 1891, his novels had fallen into obscurity. Moby-Dick, his masterwork published in 1851, was out of print and unread. But in the 1920s, critical reassessments led to a “Melville revival.” This lecture surveys some of the famous and less well-known illustrated editions, artists’ books, and other visual interpretations, […]