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Newberry Exclusives
Commemorate your visit or simply impress your well read friends with a Newberry branded item.
The Salt Shed chronicles the compelling work of reimagining and transforming Chicago's impressive and iconic Morton Salt Warehouse while honoring its history and its working-class roots.
Originally constructed in 1929, the Morton Salt Shed and Warehouse Complex has been a familiar and beloved Chicago landmark along Elston Avenue between Division Street and North Avenue. For decades, the iconic hand-painted sign has captivated people traveling along busy Interstate I-90 and on Elston Avenue at ground level. As times changed, the building was no longer used for salt storage and processing, and eventually lay dormant. Recently, the building has been repurposed and transformed into a stunning music venue.
The Salt Shed tells the story of the building's reimagining and transformation. Photographer and writer Sandra Steinbrecher spent nearly two years documenting the deconstruction, reconstruction, and reinvigoration of this classic, industrial Chicago building. Through breathtaking photos and interviews with the people who made the restoration possible--including architects, developers and workers who did the daily labor-The Salt Shed takes the reader behind the scenes in one of Chicago's most distinctive restoration projects of the 21st century.
*Pattis 2025 runner up*
To mark its 125th anniversary, the Newberry has assembled one hundred and twenty-five of its most significant objects in one beautifully illustrated volume. Arranged in order to tell both the story of the library as an institution and its collecting history, The Newberry 125 covers a great breadth of topics including: American culture throughout the ages; the history of Chicago and the Midwest; geography and exploration; religion; music and dance; Medieval and Renaissance studies; and the indigenous peoples of North America. Each of the highlighted items has been photographed in stunning full color and is accompanied by a brief description, its call number, and a concise yet informative essay by a Newberry curator, librarian, or researcher on the object's importance to the collection. By describing the unique physical qualities of these items, as well as their great scholarly import, these essays remind us how irreplaceable many of these maps, books, and documents are--and how much they still have to offer us. The pieces themselves show us the amazing power of physical objects, particularly the products of humanists over many centuries. Included are items as varied as a painting by Elbridge Ayer Burbank, the correspondence between Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson, the earliest print version of Voltaire's Candide, and a copy of Ptolemy's Geographia that dates from the fifteenth century. The Newberry 125 is as wide-ranging and impressive as the library itself, and it serves as a wonderful introduction to the collection, as well as a new and fascinating lens through which visitors and fans can view the Newberry.
Published to commemorate our anniversary, The Newberry 125: Stories of Our Collection features images and essays highlighting 125 outstanding items from our collections. Each item is presented with a one- or two-page spread that includes stunning high-resolution photographs and an essay by a Newberry curator, librarian, or researcher documenting the item’s historical context, literary significance, and amusing tidbits about production, reception, and provenance.
Arranged so as to tell both the story of the library as an institution and its collecting history, The Newberry 125 covers a wide range of topics, including American culture; the history of Chicago and the Midwest; geography and exploration; religion; music and dance; medieval and Renaissance studies; and the indigenous peoples of North America.
The collection includes items as varied as a painting by 19th-century artist Elbridge Ayer Burbank; the correspondence between Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson; the earliest print version of Voltaire’s Candide; and a copy of Ptolemy’s Geographia that dates from the fifteenth century.
The Newberry 125 serves as a wonderful introduction to our collection and provides a new and fascinating lens through which visitors can view our library.
A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book
A Best Book of 2021 by BuzzFeed and Real Simple An "unmissable" (Vogue), "exceptional" (The Washington Post), and "evocative" (Chicago Tribune) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the powerful forces at work that allow some to flourish...and others to falter. They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded--fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls--as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks' business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures--Dawn and Debra, doctors, Kim a teacher. For a brief, wondrous moment the girls are all giggles and dreams and promises of "friends forever." And then fate intervenes, first slowly and then dramatically, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There's heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Dawn struggles to make sense of the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why? In the vein of The Other Wes Moore and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Three Girls from Bronzeville is a "deeply personal" (Real Simple) memoir that chronicles Dawn's attempt to find answers. It's at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.
A Best Book of 2021 by BuzzFeed and Real Simple An "unmissable" (Vogue), "exceptional" (The Washington Post), and "evocative" (Chicago Tribune) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the powerful forces at work that allow some to flourish...and others to falter. They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded--fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls--as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks' business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures--Dawn and Debra, doctors, Kim a teacher. For a brief, wondrous moment the girls are all giggles and dreams and promises of "friends forever." And then fate intervenes, first slowly and then dramatically, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There's heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Dawn struggles to make sense of the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why? In the vein of The Other Wes Moore and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Three Girls from Bronzeville is a "deeply personal" (Real Simple) memoir that chronicles Dawn's attempt to find answers. It's at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.
*2022 Pattis Award Winner*
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
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