Given our old-school predilection for print, we found a kindred spirit in Starshaped Press, the print shop behind this exclusive letterpress print depicting our beautiful building.
Exhibition Titles
Studio Series Letterpress Stamp Set
Whimsical vintage type reminiscent of letterpress makes these rubber-tipped wooden stamps perfect for card making, scrapbooking, dot journaling, labeling, crafting, art journaling, and so much more! The rustic wooden box with metal clasp includes 70 stamps: 52 stamps of the alphabet in upper and lower case letters, 8 punctuation stamps, and 10 numbers stamps. Wooden box measures 5-3/4" wide x 3-3/8" deep x 2" deep (12.7 cm wide x 7.6 cm deep x 5 cm deep). Stamps are 1-1/2" (3.8 cm) high, with rubber stamping tip measuring 1/2" x 3/8" (1.27 cm x .95 cm).
$19.99
Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence
William and Benjamin Frank joined the Second Rhode Island Regiment in the spring of 1777, following the tradition of military service established by their father, a veteran of the French and Indian War. The brothers became part of a cohort of free Black soldiers serving in an integrated Continental Army. The Second Rhode Island saw action along the Delaware River in the defense of Fort Mercer and the battle of Red Bank, before falling back with the rest of the army to Valley Forge. Following the brutal winter of 1777-1778 and the pivotal Battle of Monmouth, New Jersey, in June 1778, veteran soldiers of color from the Second Rhode Island, including the Frank brothers, were transferred to the newly segregated First Rhode Island. This regiment was composed of Black and Native American soldiers, including enslaved men who were promised their freedom in exchange for service. Allowing formerly enslaved men to serve was reluctantly authorized by George Washington to address manpower shortages, but in exchange, he introduced segregation into the army. The "Black Regiment," as it became known returned to its home state, where it fought with distinction at the Battle of Rhode Island in August. While encamped near Providence in February 1780, Ben Frank deserted and ended up in British service. His brother William remained with his unit and served during the American victory at Yorktown, Virginia, where the Black Regiment once again demonstrated its effectiveness. William was honorably discharged and returned to Rhode Island, while Ben eventually relocated to Nova Scotia with other loyalists. In Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence historian Shirley L. Green takes the reader on a journey based on her family's history, rooted in its oral tradition. Putting together the pieces of this puzzle through archival research, interviews, and DNA evidence, the author authenticates and expands the family's oral history. In addition to providing context and substance to the Black experience during the war years, the author underscores the significant distinction between free Blacks in military service and those who had been enslaved, and how they responded in different ways to the harsh realities of racism. An original and important contribution to American history, Revolutionary Blacks presents a complex account of Black life during the Revolutionary Era and demonstrates that free men of color shared with white soldiers the desire to improve their condition in life and to maintain their families safely in postcolonial North America.
$29.95
When the Declaration of Independence Was News
Tracing the moments after its creation, this groundbreaking book follows how news of the Declaration of Independence spread to people throughout the thirteen United States and the Atlantic world.In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators. When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution. Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it.
$29.99
Promise of America: Reflections on Our Enduring Ideals
*Includes an essay by Free and Independent curator Eric Slauter*Presented by the National Constitution Center, an inspirational collection of essays exploring the founding principles that continue to shape American democracy from the nation's leading constitutional scholars across the political spectrum. The Declaration was just the beginning. The revolutionary ideas of 1776 set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the national framework established in the Constitution in 1787 laid the foundation for America's story--chapters that continue to shape our nation. What did liberty and equality mean in 1776 and what do they ask of us today? In this one-of-a-kind keepsake volume, leading historical scholars take a fresh look at America's founding documents--the texts, historical context, key principles that animated the framers, and their influence across American history and around the world. Featuring US Supreme Court Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Stephen G. Breyer (Ret.), world-renowned scholars like Walter Isaacson and Akhil Reed Amar, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Danielle Allen, and numerous other New York Times bestselling authors, this commemorative collection of essays brings together our nation's foremost historians and scholars from across the political spectrum, and invites all Americans to explore the ideals that inspired the greatest and most enduring democratic experiment in history.
$18.00
Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist
At a time of few opportunities for women in general and even fewer for African American women, Jackie Ormes (1911-85) blazed a trail as a popular cartoonist with the major black newspapers of the day. Her cartoon characters (including Torchy Brown, Candy, Patty-Jo, and Ginger) delighted readers and spawned other products, including an elegant doll with a stylish wardrobe and "Torchy Togs" paper dolls. Ormes was a member of Chicago's black elite, with a social circle that included the leading political figures and entertainers of the day. Her cartoons and comic strips provide an invaluable glimpse into American culture and history, with topics that include racial segregation, U.S. foreign policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution, among other pressing issues of the times--and of today's world as well. This celebrated biography features a large sampling of Ormes's cartoons and comic strips, and a new preface.
$24.95
Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Revised)
"A fascinating collection" of wartime cartoons from the beloved children's author and illustrator (The New York Times Book Review). For decades, readers throughout the world have enjoyed the marvelous stories and illustrations of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. But few know the work Geisel did as a political cartoonist during World War II, for the New York daily newspaper PM. In these extraordinarily trenchant cartoons, Geisel presents "a provocative history of wartime politics" (Entertainment Weekly). Dr. Seuss Goes to War features handsome, large-format reproductions of more than two hundred of Geisel's cartoons, alongside "insightful" commentary by the historian Richard H. Minear that places them in the context of the national climate they reflect (Booklist). Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman's introduction places Seuss firmly in the pantheon of the leading political cartoonists of our time. "A shocker--this cat is not in the hat!" --Studs Terkel
$24.99
Pattis Award
This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement
*2026 Pattis Shortlist winner* The remarkable life story of Ella Jenkins, "The First Lady of Children's Music." Ella Jenkins was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. Her songs "You'll Sing a Song and I'll Sing a Song" and "Who Fed the Chickens?" are classics in the world of children's music. In a career spanning more than sixty years, she recorded forty albums, won a lifetime-achievement Grammy, and became the best-selling individual artist in the history of Smithsonian Folkways Records, the independent label that played a significant role in the 1960s folk revival movement and introduced listeners to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. During her remarkable career, Jenkins joined forces with twentieth-century luminaries such as Odetta, Big Bill Broonzy, Armando Peraza, Bayard Rustin, and Fred Rogers. Despite her wide-reaching influence on children's music, Ella Jenkins's sonic civil rights activism isn't widely known today. Based on dozens of interviews and access to Ella Jenkins's personal archives, Gayle F. Wald's This Is Rhythm shares how Jenkins, a "rhythm specialist" with no formal musical training, became the most prolific and significant American children's musician of the twentieth century, creating a beloved catalog of songs grounded in values of community-building, antiracism, and cultural pluralism. Wald traces how the daughter of southern migrants translated the music of her own Black girlhood on the South Side of Chicago into a form of civil rights activism--a musical education that empowered children by introducing them to Black history, African diasporic rhythms, and a participatory, community-centered approach to music. Wald also discusses how, beginning in 1961, Jenkins built a life with a female partner who supported her materially and emotionally. Although Jenkins did not talk publicly about her sixty-three-year relationship, she opened up to Wald, offering insight into how a "private" Black woman in the public eye negotiated sexuality in an era before gay and lesbian liberation movements. Throughout her career, her innovative music found its way into thousands of community centers, classrooms, and concert venues, and her "call-and-response" method has influenced and empowered generations of children and adults. A beautifully written tribute to Ella Jenkins's legacy, this biography illustrates her impact on children's music and expands our understanding of folk music's relationship with social justice. Jenkins used music to build a new world in which children--and adults--are encouraged to listen to each other's distinct rhythms.
$27.50
Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City's Soul
*2025 Pattis award winner* WINNER OF THE MIDLAND AUTHORS AWARD FOR HISTORY - LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE - A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - The "illuminating" (New Yorker) story of the Great Chicago Fire: a raging inferno, a harrowing fight for survival, and the struggle for the soul of a city--told with the "the clarity--and tension--of a well-wrought military narrative" (Wall Street Journal) In the fall of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the "big one"--a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. It had been bone-dry for months, and a recent string of blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department's already scant resources. Then, on October 8, a minor fire broke out in the barn of Irishwoman Kate Leary. A series of unfortunate mishaps and misunderstandings along with insufficient preparation and a high south-westerly wind combined to set the stage for an unmitigated catastrophe. The conflagration that spread from the Learys' property quickly overtook the neighborhood, and before long the floating embers had been cast to the far reaches of the city. Nothing to the northeast was safe. Families took to the streets with every possession they could carry. Powerful gusts whipped the flames into a terrifying firestorm. The Chicago River boiled. Over the next forty-eight hours, Chicago fell victim to the largest and most destructive natural disaster the United States had yet endured. The effects of the Great Fire were devastating. But they were also transforming. Out of the ashes, faster than seemed possible, rose new homes, tenements, hotels, and civic buildings, as well as a new political order. The elite seized the reconstruction to crack down on vice, control the disbursement of vast charitable funds, and rebuild the city in their image. But the city's working class recognized only a naked power grab that would challenge their traditions, hurt their chances to keep their hard-earned property, and move power out of the hands of elected officials and into private interests. As soon as the battle against the fire ended, another battle for the future of the city erupted between its entrenched business establishment and its poor and immigrant laborers and shopkeepers. An enrapturing account of the fire's inexorable march and an eye-opening look at its aftermath, The Burning of the World tells the story of one of the most infamous calamities in history and the new Chicago it precipitated--a disaster that still shapes American cities to this day.
$19.00
Clout City: The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Political Machine
*2026 Pattis Award Winner*Unearths the religious and cultural roots of a powerful political machine that empowered some everyday Chicagoans but ruled all of the city for decades. In politics, clout is essential. Too often, it determines whether insider access is granted or denied, favors are given or withheld, and payoffs are made or received. But Chicago clout, as we know it today, is even more potent than that--it's the absolute currency of a social, cultural, and political order that is self-reinforcing and self-dealing. Or, at least, it was. In Clout City, award-winning historian Dominic A. Pacyga reveals how cultural, ethnic, and religious forces created this distinctive system--and ultimately led to its collapse. Tracing clout's origins in the Irish Catholic-dominated working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, shaped by De La Salle Institute and home to the legendary Daley family, Pacyga shows how communal ties can be a force for good and also the deepest wellspring of corruption. He maps Chicago's unique politics to its remarkable history, from the Great Fire of 1871 through its rise and decline as an industrial center to its emergence as a global city in the early twenty-first century. With deep research and firsthand experience from a lifetime in the city, Pacyga argues that Chicago's politics is understood best as a mixture of cultural and religious influences and more worldly pursuits, exploring how both Jewish and Catholic communalism played central roles in the creation and sustenance of the Chicago machine. Chicago's politics today aren't as defined by its distinctive brand of clout. But they are shaped by clout's decline and the ghost of the machine. Pacyga's tour of the city's multilayered past is an indispensable guide to its present and future.
$32.50
Newberry Exclusives
Baseball Cap - Black with Mulberry Logo
This imprinted cap is made from 100% cotton.Each cap features an unstructured, low-profile design with a soft-lined front.Designed with a six-paneled crown and a pre-curved visor.Includes a self-fabric closure strap with an antique silver buckle.
$19.95
Yellow Manuela Tote
This bright yellow tote features artwork from a woodcut lace border detail with grasshoppers and other local flora and fauna, from a doctoral Thesis Print on Logic. Original printed on satin by Manuela Cereza and defended in the Cathedral of Puebla, Mexico, in 1746.Call number: Ayer BC60.F74 1746$20.00
$25.00
Newberry Gift Certificate
Give the gift of choice to your favorite reader or Library fan!Sold in $25, $50, $75 or $100 dollar amounts, A Newberry Bookshop Gift Certificate can be used on any item in the Newberry Bookshop, including sale merch and Adult Ed titles.
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