Odd Bits
The Unexpected Legacy of the Carob Seed
As those of you who also read my newsletter already know, My Own True Love and I recently got back from a ten-day tour in Sicily. The tour focused on food, not on history, but you can’t keep history nerds from noticing history, especially in a cultural melting pot like Sicily, which at various times…
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Around the World in Eleven Years
And speaking of memoirs about living in Nazi Germany, as I believe we were, allow me to introduce you to Around the World in Eleven Years, possibly the most unusual memoir of the period. Published in 1936, the book was purportedly written by eleven-year-old Patience Abbe with occasional input her younger brothers Richard, and John.…
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Beatrice Warde: “First Lady of Typography”
Those of you who read my previous post on Books Across the Sea have already been introduced (very briefly) to American writer and typographer Beatrice Warde (1900-1969). Like many writers, I have opinions about type fonts,* and I was fascinated to learn about the changing world of typography in the first half of the twentieth…
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