This year’s Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair takes place at the Hynes Convention Center on the weekend of November 11 - 13. After two long years of online-only events, we’re looking forward to seeing all our favorite booksellers and book shoppers in person again. Admission is free on Saturday and Sunday—but the Brattle might be able to hook you up with a free pass for Friday too. Today’s episode features a sneak preview of our most exciting fair offerings: signed volumes from major American poets, first editions of feminist landmarks and beloved children’s classics, and an unusual treatise on… rat-catching. Come for the book fair pregame, stay for Jordan’s J.F.K. impression, and learn more at bostonbookfair.com.
Brattlecast #122 - Ken's Amazing Notes
A fun grab-bag episode of some of Ken’s favorite stories to tell at lectures and on chat shows. Topics include the JFK assassination, a J. D. Salinger sighting, a narrowly missed Red Sox milestone, and more. Speaking of lectures, we’re delighted to be scheduling live events again. If you’d like to have an item appraised and hear these and other stories in person, you can catch Ken at one of his upcoming speaking engagements throughout New England. View the full lineup here: https://www.brattlebookshop.com/events.
Bonus Brattlecast - Covid Collectables
Like it or not, we’re living through a fairly dramatic historic event. What kinds of documents and ephemera being generated today will be of interest to future collectors and historians as they try to parse the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the lives of everyday people? In a time when so many of us get our news from twitter, what physical artifacts might remain to remind us of these troubling and unprecedented weeks? Also, we remind you to please feel free to email or call the shop—Ken is there looking after things, and staying connected is important to us while the shop is closed to the public.
Brattlecast #49 - Space is the Place
You’ll be over the moon for this extraterrestrial episode. Ken talks about collecting items relating to the Space Race, in a journey from sci-fi paperbacks and 1960s newspapers to real Russian space suits and million dollar moon rocks. It’s out of this world!
Brattlecast #9 - These Magazines are Giving Me Life
Life Magazine: a touchstone of American culture for nearly a century. In this episode, Ken Gloss provides some fascinating background on the enduring popularity of Life among amateur collectors, and the unique way its content, photography, and advertising captured the zeitgeist. Can you guess the magazine's rarest and most elusive cover?