See Carl Sagan’s Childhood Sketches of The Future of Space Travel

in Art, Astronomy, History | January 24th, 2014

Carl Sagan had his first reli­gious expe­ri­ence at the age of five. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it was root­ed in sci­ence. Sagan, then liv­ing in Brook­lyn, had start­ed pes­ter­ing every­one around him about what stars were, and had grown frus­trat­ed by his inabil­i­ty to get a straight answer. Like the resource­ful five-year-old that he was, the young Sagan took mat­ters into his own hands and pro­ceed­ed to the library:

“I went to the librar­i­an and asked for a book about stars … And the answer was stun­ning. It was that the Sun was a star but real­ly close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just lit­tle points of light … The scale of the uni­verse sud­den­ly opened up to me. It was a kind of reli­gious expe­ri­ence. There was a mag­nif­i­cence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has nev­er left me. Nev­er ever left me.”

This sense of uni­ver­sal won­der would even­tu­al­ly lead Sagan to become a well-known astronomer and cos­mol­o­gist, as well as one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most beloved sci­ence edu­ca­tors. Although he passed away in 1996, aged 62, Sagan’s lega­cy remains alive and well. This March, a reboot of his famed 1980 PBS show, Comos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, will appear on Fox, with the equal­ly great sci­ence pop­u­lar­iz­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson tak­ing Sagan’s role as host. Mean­while, last Novem­ber saw the open­ing of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive at the Library of Con­gress.

Among the papers in the archive was this sketch, titled “The Evo­lu­tion of Inter­stel­lar Flight,” which Sagan drew between the ages of 10 and 13. In the cen­ter of the draw­ing Sagan pen­cilled the  logo of Inter­stel­lar Space­lines, which, Sagan imag­ined, was “Estab­lished [in] 1967 for the advance­ment of transpa­cial and intrau­ni­ver­sal sci­ence.” Its mot­to? “Dis­cov­ery –Explo­ration – Col­o­niza­tion.” Sur­round­ing the logo, Sagan drew assort­ed news­pa­per clip­pings that he imag­ined could her­ald the key tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in the space race. Impres­sive­ly drawn astro­nauts in the cor­ner aside, I most enjoyed the faux-clip­ping that read “LIFE FOUND ON VENUS: Pre­his­toric-like rep­tiles are…” Good luck con­tain­ing your sense of won­der on see­ing that.

via F, Yeah Man­u­scripts!

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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A List of Nelson Mandela’s Possessions Upon Leaving Prison: Surfboard, Exercise Bike & White Cardboard Hat

in History | January 23rd, 2014

Prisonlist

Nel­son Man­dela, who passed away late last year, spent more than a quar­ter of his life in pris­ons. For the first twen­ty years, begin­ning with his 1962 incar­cer­a­tion in Johannesburg’s Mar­shall Square Prison when Man­dela was 44 years old, there was lit­tle hope of clemen­cy from the apartheid regime. By the 1980s, how­ev­er, inter­na­tion­al pres­sure was bear­ing down on the reign­ing Nation­al Par­ty. Multi­na­tion­al banks stopped invest­ing in South Africa, and sev­er­al of them, along­side British PM Mar­garet Thatch­er, demand­ed that Man­dela be released. Inter­nal­ly, the country’s ten­sions were becom­ing dif­fi­cult to con­trol, and the regime attempt­ed to enforce order by declar­ing a state of emer­gency. The crack­down result­ed in fur­ther anti-gov­ern­ment attacks by the anti-apartheid African Nation­al Con­gress. Even­tu­al­ly, the pres­sure proved insur­mount­able, and the 72 year old Man­dela was released from Vic­tor Ver­ster prison in 1990.

Upon walk­ing out of Vic­tor Ver­ster, Man­dela received the per­son­al prop­er­ty he had relin­quished dur­ing his time in jail. Above is a pho­to­graph of the hand­writ­ten list of his per­son­al effects. (Click the image to read it in a larg­er for­mat.) Our res­i­dent Afrikaans expert (i.e., Google Trans­late) pro­vides an Eng­lish trans­la­tion below:

Inven­to­ry

Prop­er­ty Mr. Man­dela

21 +1 box­es

1 Reisegers* Bag

1 Urn

1 Surf Board

4 Rat­tan Bas­kets

1 foot­stool

1 Large Birth­day Card

1 White Card­board Hat

2 Big Umbrel­las

1 Set Weights

1 Exer­cise Bike

Cor­rect Onta­vang:* [illeg­i­ble]

Urns and rat­tan bas­kets are all well and good, but I was most impressed that the great anti-apartheid leader count­ed an exer­cise bike and a set of weights among his pos­ses­sions. Don’t even get me start­ed on the surf­board. Then again, Man­dela took his fit­ness more seri­ous­ly than most dur­ing his life­time, as he not­ed in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

“I enjoyed the dis­ci­pline and soli­tari­ness of long-dis­tance run­ning, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school life.”

“On Mon­day through Thurs­day, I would do sta­tion­ary run­ning in my cell in the morn­ing for up to forty-five min­utes. I would also per­form one hun­dred fin­ger­tip push-ups, two hun­dred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends, and var­i­ous oth­er cal­is­then­ics.”

 “Exer­cise was unusu­al for African men of my age and gen­er­a­tion… I know that some of my younger com­rades looked at me and said to them­selves, ‘if that old man can do it, why can’t I?’ They too began to exer­cise.”

“I attend­ed the gym for one and a half hours each evening from Mon­day through Thurs­day… We did an hour of exer­cise, some com­bi­na­tion of road­work, skip­ping rope, cal­is­then­ics, or shad­ow box­ing, fol­lowed by fif­teen min­utes of body work, some weight lift­ing, and then spar­ring.” 

To learn more about Nel­son Man­dela and view oth­er orig­i­nal doc­u­ments, head over to the Nel­son Man­dela Foundation’s Dig­i­tal Archives.

And if you can help us fig­ure out what “Reisegers bag” and “Cor­rect Onta­vang” mean and write the trans­la­tion in the com­ment sec­tion, we’d appre­ci­ate it!

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­de­la’s First-Ever TV Inter­view (1961)

Mor­gan Free­man Mas­ter­ful­ly Recites Nel­son Mandela’s Favorite Poem, “Invic­tus”

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

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Download 100,000+ Images From The History of Medicine, All Free Courtesy of The Wellcome Library

in Art, Biology, History, Science | January 21st, 2014

L0043496 Ambroise Pare: prosthetics, mechanical hand

The Well­come Library, in Lon­don, spe­cial­izes in the his­to­ry of med­i­cine. While the insti­tu­tion has long offered a good dig­i­tal col­lec­tion for brows­ing, the library announced yes­ter­day that they are mak­ing more than 100,000 his­tor­i­cal images free to down­load under a Cre­ative Com­mons CC-BY license. (Users can dis­trib­ute, edit, or remix at will; the license even allows for com­mer­cial use, with attri­bu­tion.)

The Wellcome’s hold­ings rep­re­sent the institution’s long-term inter­est in col­lect­ing art relat­ed to med­i­cine, the body, pub­lic health, and med­ical sci­ence. The drop-down menu labeled “Tech­nique” in the stan­dard search box returns a stag­ger­ing array of types of visu­al cul­ture, from aquatint to carv­ing to fres­co to X‑ray. The library reports that the ear­li­est image avail­able is from 400 AD: a frag­ment of papyrus from an illus­trat­ed herbal man­u­script, fea­tur­ing a fad­ed col­or draw­ing of a plant.

L0031627 Mastectomy, attributed to a Dutch artist, 17th century

Some images in the col­lec­tion are, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, squirm-induc­ing (an 1851 Japan­ese wood­cut show­ing an ampu­ta­tion of the low­er leg; a Dutch etch­ing depict­ing a 17th-c mas­tec­to­my; a Ger­man illus­tra­tion show­ing 17th-cen­tu­ry monks per­form­ing eye surgery). But there is plen­ty of beau­ty here, as well. I loved an a 19th-c wood­cut of a sumo match, and a Tibetan illus­trat­ed man­u­script used in the pro­duc­tion of med­i­cines.

L0038345 Tibetan plant manuscript Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Illustrations of Tibetan materia medica, plant and animal, used in the production of medicine. Title: 'A Selection of Substances used for the Production of Medicine based on the Teaching of the four (medical) Tantras' This anonymous manuscript is written in the 'Trungpa' ('khrungs dpe) genre of Tibetan medical literature. Entitled, 'Sman bla'i dgongs rgyan rgud bzhi'i nang gi 'khrungs dpe re zhig', it deals with various material medica, plant and animal, used in the production of medicine. The book comprises unbound sheets of thick (perhaps Russian?) paper held together by two boards and wrapped in a piece of cloth. The medical illustrations are finished in colour. The manuscript is very rare and obviously very expensive. Its owner made a significant effort to obtain illustrations for every medicine mentioned, including plants, stones and animals. There are several suggestions about the origin of the manuscript. It might well be a copy from Sangye Gyatso's 'tankas', possibly written by a painter or doctor who travelled from Mongolia to Lhasa. It could have been transcribed in Tibet and subsequently sold to Mongolia. There is a similarity between the images of material medica in this manuscript and those found in the 19th century Tibetan xylographs of medical works, like the 'Mdzes mtshar mig rgyan', which circulated in the territory of Mongolia in the nineteenth century. 18th century Sman bla'i dgongs rgyan rgud bzhi'i nang gi 'khrungs dpe re zhig 'A Selection of Substances used for the Production of Medicine based on the Teaching of the four (medical) Tantras Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Browsers inter­est­ed in dip­ping a toe into the stream of images may try out the gal­leries list­ed on the Images home­page. The “Olympic Sports” gallery offers an 1829 engrav­ing of the famous con­joined twins Chang and Eng hold­ing bad­minton rack­ets, and an 1870 illus­tra­tion of rec­om­mend­ed ring exer­cis­es for lady gym­nasts. The “Witch­craft” col­lec­tion (under the “Favourites” tab) con­tains many illus­tra­tions from his­tor­i­cal books cov­er­ing witch­craft in Europe and the Amer­i­can colonies, along with a more sur­pris­ing 19th-cen­tu­ry Malayan black-mag­ic charm.

Rights-man­aged images are marked as such in the thumb­nail results that appear after a search. Although the archive requires you to enter a CAPTCHA to access the free images, you can select sev­er­al thumb­nails on the search-results page in order to bulk-down­load files for many images at the same time. The sam­ple files I request­ed arrived on my desk­top at 300 dpi.

The image above is an illus­tra­tion of a mechan­i­cal hand from 1564.

h/t @kirstinbutler

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

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Read Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story: The Influential 1957 Civil Rights Comic Book

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Education, History, Politics | January 20th, 2014

MLKComic

From the para­noid fun­da­men­tal­ist tracts of Jack Chick, to Ronald McDon­ald pro­mot­ing scout­ing, to an upcom­ing graph­ic nov­el explain­ing the sci­ence of cli­mate change, comics and graph­ic nov­els have long been a means of both pros­e­ly­tiz­ing and inform­ing, con­dens­ing com­plex nar­ra­tives into a digestible for­mat with broad appeal. The medi­um is so elas­tic, it can seem­ing­ly adapt itself to any kind of sto­ry, even the most sober­ly seri­ous and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. For exam­ple, Geor­gia Con­gress­man John Lewis, vet­er­an of the Civ­il Rights move­ment, chose to tell his story—in col­lab­o­ra­tion with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell—as a graph­ic nov­el called March (mak­ing him the first law­mak­er to appear at a Com­ic-Con). Part one of three was pub­lished late last year and rose to the top of the New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post best­seller lists. March has also become an impor­tant resource for teach­ers and librar­i­ans (down­load a free 11-page teach­ers guide from pub­lish­er Top Shelf here).

MontgomeryMethod

Lewis’ choice of medi­um may seem moti­vat­ed by the cur­rent esteem in which the form is held in schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar cir­cles alike, but he was pri­mar­i­ly influ­enced by a much ear­li­er civ­il rights com­ic book, Mar­tin Luther King and the Mont­gomery Sto­ry. (See cov­er up top. Read it online here.) Begun just five months after Rosa Parks’ his­toric refusal, the com­ic aimed to dis­sem­i­nate the epic tale of the Mont­gomery, AL bus boy­cott through­out the South. A sec­tion called “The Mont­gomery Method” (first page above) instructs read­ers on the non­vi­o­lent resis­tance tech­niques employed by civ­il rights work­ers in Alaba­ma, with a primer on Gand­hi and his influ­ence on King. In the short video below, see NYU pro­fes­sor and King schol­ar Sylvia Rhor explain the gen­e­sis of the com­ic in the work of Alfred Has­sler, then leader of Civ­il Rights orga­ni­za­tion Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Has­sler, a lit­tle-known fig­ure who died in 1991, is now receiv­ing more recog­ni­tion through sim­i­lar means. He him­self recent­ly became the sub­ject of a graph­ic nov­el project (and now doc­u­men­tary) called The Secret of the 5 Pow­ers about his work with Bud­dhist peace activists Thich Nhat Hanh and Sis­ter Chan Khong dur­ing the Viet­nam War.

As Rhor notes above, the King com­ic has had tremen­dous influ­ence, not only in the past, and not only on Rep. Lewis in the present. In 2003–2004, The Mont­gomery Sto­ry was trans­lat­ed into Ara­bic, and Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies dur­ing the Arab Spring found inspi­ra­tion in the com­ic book that “turned Mar­tin Luther King into a super­hero”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200,000 Mar­tin Luther King Papers Go Online

MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

Nichelle Nichols Tells Neil deGrasse Tyson How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Revisit the 1940 Map of American Diversity, Owned & Bitingly Annotated by Poet Langston Hughes

in History, Literature | January 20th, 2014

EthnicToleranceMapFinal.jpg.CROP.original-originalRebec­ca Onion, who occa­sion­al­ly con­tributes to Open Cul­ture, runs The Vault, a blog resid­ing at Slate.com that’s “ded­i­cat­ed to his­to­ry at its most beau­ti­ful, strange, fun­ny, and mov­ing.” It’s a great place to spend time if you enjoy revis­it­ing archival doc­u­ments of his­tor­i­cal inter­est — pho­tographs, pam­phlets, but­tons, toys and, yes, maps, like the one above. Fea­tured on The Vault last week, this curi­ous map was issued by the Coun­cil Against Intol­er­ance in Amer­i­ca in 1940 and depicts the “geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions, typ­i­cal employ­ment, and reli­gious com­mit­ments” of eth­nic groups liv­ing in the Unit­ed States at the time time. A copy of the map was owned and anno­tat­ed by poet Langston Hugh­es, the Amer­i­can poet, social activist, play­wright, who was a lead­ing fig­ure in the Harlem Renais­sance. If you enlarge the image (click here, then click again) and look care­ful­ly, you can see that he anno­tat­ed the map with a red pen. One such anno­ta­tion — where he placed a burn­ing cross and “K.K.K.” in the vicin­i­ty of African Amer­i­cans liv­ing in the South — appears in the image below. Head over to The Vault to get more on this sto­ry.

hughes annotation 2

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Rich­mond Ani­mates the 1932 Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

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Discover Cy Endfield’s “Microwriter,” The World’s First Portable Word Processor (Circa 1980)

in History, Technology | January 14th, 2014

The hall­mark of an endur­ing inven­tion is the dif­fi­cul­ty oth­ers encounter when attempt­ing to improve on its orig­i­nal design. The QWERTY key­board is a prime exam­ple: since the emer­gence of the Rem­ing­ton No. 1 type­writer in 1874, the key­board has con­fi­dent­ly with­stood any sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. That’s not to say that curi­ous alter­na­tives haven’t occa­sion­al­ly come along. Indeed, sev­er­al weeks ago we wrote about the Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball, the late 19th cen­tu­ry type­writer Friedrich Niet­zsche used while trav­el­ling. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the writ­ing ball proved too frag­ile and expen­sive to man­u­fac­ture, and today sur­vives sole­ly as a rel­ic.

The most unusu­al recent attempt to rein­vent the key­board was devised by Cy End­field in the ear­ly 1980s. End­field was a Hol­ly­wood direc­tor of some suc­cess pri­or to being declared a Com­mu­nist by Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mis­sion and black­list­ed in 1951. An alto­geth­er enter­pris­ing fel­low, End­field kept his chin up and his upper lip stiff, opt­ing to head to Eng­land where he worked on films (e.g., Zulu, 1964), wrote a book, and per­formed card tricks with remark­able skill. He also cre­at­ed a six-but­ton word proces­sor he called the Microwriter.

Microwriter

In a 1984 inter­view with NPR, End­field recount­ed want­i­ng to reduce the num­ber of keys used when typ­ing. Instead of push­ing a key and obtain­ing the cor­re­spond­ing let­ter (a 1‑to‑1 ratio), he want­ed to use a hand­ful of keys to yield the whole of the alpha­bet. He decid­ed that chords were the answer:

“It occurred to me that… it would be pos­si­ble to com­bine a set of sig­nals from sep­a­rate keys, and there­fore you could reduce the total num­ber of keys. But, of course, this involved the learn­ing of chords… dif­fi­cult to mem­o­rize… But how do you make these chords mem­o­rable? And, one day, star­ing at a sheet of paper on which I was draw­ing a set of five keys in sort of the arch formed by the fin­ger ends, it occurred to me, ah! if I press the thumb key, and the index fin­ger key, any­body can do this just lis­ten­ing now, press your thumb key and your index fin­ger down and you’ll see that a ver­ti­cal line joins those two fin­ger ends, a short ver­ti­cal line. There is an equiv­a­lence between that short ver­ti­cal line and one let­ter of the alpha­bet. It’s the let­ter “I.”

The above video pro­vides a much sim­pler and more con­cise expla­na­tion.

Equipped with 16 kb of RAM and a sin­gle line LED dis­play, the Microwriter allowed users to quick­ly type notes on the go and trans­fer the results to their com­put­ers through the ser­i­al port. Five of the but­tons cor­re­spond­ed to the var­i­ous chord-keys, and the low­er thumb but­ton allowed users to cycle through var­i­ous input modes.

While it was pos­si­ble to achieve a quick pace with the device when typ­ing tex­tu­al rather than numer­ic input, users of the device remem­ber need­ing sev­er­al days of train­ing to remem­ber the var­i­ous key com­bi­na­tions and to begin using the device with some pro­fi­cien­cy. Need­less to say, in spite of End­field­’s claims of being the world’s first portable word proces­sor, the Microwriter sim­ply was­n’t user friend­ly enough to sur­vive. It entered pro­duc­tion in the ear­ly 1980s, and ceased in 1985.

To read or lis­ten to Cy Endfield’s full inter­view, head over to the NPR Archives tum­blr.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

The His­to­ry of the Seem­ing­ly Impos­si­ble Chi­nese Type­writer

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Online Cours­es

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Memory of the Camps (1985): The Holocaust Documentary that Traumatized Alfred Hitchcock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

in Film, History | January 13th, 2014

You may have heard the news that the world will soon see “Alfred Hitch­cock­’s unseen Holo­caust doc­u­men­tary.” That intrigu­ing sound­ing announce­ment belies a more com­pli­cat­ed real­i­ty. This new, restored film draws on footage shot by the British Army Film Unit in Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps in 1945, which was actu­al­ly released in the mid-80s, in a film called Mem­o­ry of the Camps. This first ver­sion, which you can watch above, took near­ly forty years to reach the pub­lic, when it was final­ly released in 1984, first at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, then on PBS. Until that time, the orig­i­nal footage sat unused in stor­age at the Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um, con­signed there after the Allied mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment decid­ed that such pub­lic­i­ty for Nazi atroc­i­ties would­n’t get Ger­many recon­struct­ed any faster. How, right in the after­math of the Sec­ond World War, might we have react­ed to its haunt­ing­ly reveal­ing cov­er­age of Bergen-Belsen?

Accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent, a screen­ing of Mem­o­ry of the Camps’ mate­r­i­al left even Alfred Hitch­cock, cer­tain­ly no stranger to death and malev­o­lence, “so trau­ma­tised that he stayed away from Pinewood Stu­dios for a week.” He’d shown up there in the first place as an advi­sor, and in that capac­i­ty offered direc­tor Sid­ney Bern­stein advice on how, visu­al­ly, to place these shock­ing rev­e­la­tions in a rec­og­niz­able geo­graph­i­cal and human con­text. “He took a cir­cle round each con­cen­tra­tion camp as it were on a map, dif­fer­ent vil­lages, dif­fer­ent places and the num­bers of peo­ple,” Bern­stein remem­bers. “Oth­er­wise you could show a con­cen­tra­tion camp, as you see them now, and it could be any­where, miles away from human­i­ty. He brought that into the film.” For more on Mem­o­ry of the Camps and its upcom­ing suc­ces­sor, a remas­tered ver­sion with a “lost” sixth reel restored, see also Richard Brody’s relat­ed New York­er post.

Mem­o­ry of the Camps and oth­er wartime films appears in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Did Hol­ly­wood Movies Stu­dios “Col­lab­o­rate” with Hitler Dur­ing WW II? His­to­ri­an Makes the Case

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

How Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor, Sur­vived the Hor­rif­ic Ordeal with Music

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Read 700 Free eBooks Made Available by the University of California Press

in Books, e-books, History, Literature | January 12th, 2014

mark twain uc press

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press e‑books col­lec­tion holds books pub­lished by UCP (and a select few print­ed by oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic press­es) between 1982–2004. The gen­er­al pub­lic cur­rent­ly has access to 770 books through this ini­tia­tive. The col­lec­tion is dynam­ic, with new titles being added over time.

Read­ers look­ing to see what the col­lec­tion holds can browse by sub­ject. The cura­tors of the site have kind­ly pro­vid­ed a sec­ond brows­ing page that shows only the pub­licly acces­si­ble books, omit­ting any frus­trat­ing off-lim­its titles.

The collection’s strengths are in his­to­ry (par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of Cal­i­for­nia and the West); reli­gion; lit­er­ary stud­ies; and inter­na­tion­al stud­ies (with strong selec­tions of Mid­dle East­ern Stud­ies, Asian Stud­ies, and French Stud­ies titles).

A quick browse yields a mul­ti­tude of inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for future read­ing: Shel­ley Streeby’s 2002 book about sen­sa­tion­al lit­er­a­ture and dime nov­els in the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Unit­ed States; Luise White’s intrigu­ing-look­ing Speak­ing with Vam­pires: Rumor and His­to­ry in Colo­nial Africa (2000); and Karen Lystra’s 2004 re-exam­i­na­tion of Mark Twain’s final years. (The image above comes from anoth­er Twain text by Ran­dall Knop­er.) Two oth­er note­wor­thy texts include Roland Barthes’ Inci­dents and Hugh Ken­ner’s Chuck Jones: A Flur­ry of Draw­ings.

Sad­ly, you can’t down­load the books to an e‑reader or tablet. Hap­pi­ly, there is a “book­bag” func­tion that you can use to store your titles, if you need to leave the site and come back.

As always, we’d encour­age you to vis­it our col­lec­tion of 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices, where we recent­ly added texts by Vladimir Nabokov, Philip K. Dick and oth­ers. Also find free cours­es in our list of 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter:@rebeccaonion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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