Published: New York, 1940 In 1940, the United States had not yet entered World War II. The year prior had seen the German invasion of Poland, and war declared on Germany by the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Australia. On September 5, 1939, the United States announced its neutrality in the war. Some were surprised, then, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act into law on September 27, 1940. This was the first time a draft had been instituted in the U.S. during peacetime.  The Act required that all American males age 21 to […]

Published: New York, 1939 Stephen Daye, a British locksmith, came to what is now Massachusetts in 1638 with the Rev. Jose Glover.  Glover intended to become the colony’s first printer, but he died en route, leaving Daye to set up shop in present-day Harvard Square. The Bay Psalm Book, printed by Daye in 1640, remains the oldest extant book printed in what is now the United States. Its rarity is legend: only 11 copies survive. Still, the Bay Psalm Book was not the first item to come off Daye’s press. That distinction belongs to The Oath of a Free-Man, a […]

Published: New York, 1938 The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, like all such wars, brought loss, injury, brutal hardship, and often death to the country’s civilian population. External forces played an outsized role during the course of the war, with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy aiding the rebel Nationalists, while the Republicans received support from the Soviet Union and from brigades made up of volunteers from the U.S. and Europe. The politics of the war were fiendishly complex – the Republican side, especially, experienced conflict within its own ranks, which included factions within factions. Eventually the Nationalists were victorious, and […]

Published: Boston, 1937 The Federal Writers’ Project was a New Deal work relief program of the Works Progress Administration. From 1935 to 1939, the project employed around 5,000 people a year (a fraction of those enrolled in WPA programs overall), as writers, editors, and information-gatherers. The purpose of the Writers’ Project was to create a state-by-state “American Guide Series” of publications, in order to present a collective vision of America that drew on the richness and diversity of the people, history, and culture to be found in each state. (It was sort of like writing about 150 different books, to […]

Published: Shanghai, 1936 It seems like you can’t turn on the TV or open a newspaper without hearing another report or reading another editorial about the rise of China. The country’s increasingly prominent position on the world political stage and its economy’s dazzling growth have convinced many observers that China is on track to becoming the world’s next superpower. MIT has certainly taken notice, and the Institute’s Greater China Global Initiative outlines curriculum changes, increased collaboration, and other proposed actions in recognition of this development. In the realms of science and technology, it has long been clear that China produces […]

Published: New York, 1935 In 1901, 27-year-old William H. Ukers worked as an editor for The Spice Mill, the in-house magazine of the Jabez Burns coffee company.  Taking note of a growing trend, he suggested to his boss that the magazine expand to become a trade journal.  The boss dismissed the idea, Ukers summarily quit, and the rest is coffee and tea history – literally. As legend has it, Ukers started The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal that very day.  He would devote his entire career to the journal and its publishing imprint, which fused up-to-date reportage with historical and […]

Published: Germany, 1934 Walter Gropius, a noted pioneer of modern architecture, founded the Bauhaus in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. The school focused on architecture, design, crafts and art with the goal of imbuing students with an understanding of the arts and craftsmanship. Students at the Bauhaus trained in workshops that provided practical, hands-on experience across disciplines. The workshops stressed collaboration with industry and the production of high-quality items that could be mass-produced and sold at a reasonable price. The most commercially successful products to come out of the Bauhaus workshops were the wallpapers designed in the mural-painting workshop. Bauhaus wallpapers […]

Published: New York, 1933 Variously praised as a major exposé and criticized as unfounded sensationalism, this wake-up call to American consumers, describing the harmful chemicals found in products they used every day, was a bestseller when it was published. Who could resist such thought-provoking chapter titles as “A Steady Diet of Arsenic and Lead,” “Prescriptions, Magic, and Poison,” and “The Quack and the Dead”? The MIT community certainly couldn’t resist. The Libraries accessioned this book on 1 February 1934. Very little time had passed since its publication, and interest in the title hadn’t waned. Our copy’s date-due slip is covered […]

Published: Washington, 1932 Francis LaFlesche was the son of the last Omaha head chief. He eventually became an ethnologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. Among many notable accomplishments, his effort to capture and preserve a record of tribal culture yielded hours of recordings of Osage chants and ceremonies that would otherwise have been lost forever. The Library of Congress, which now holds the recordings, considers LaFlesche’s Osage work “very probably the most exhaustive documentation of complete Indian ceremonies ever produced.” This volume, published the year he died, remains the definitive dictionary of the Osage language […]

Published: Paris, 1931 The use of cameras was not permitted during deliberations at the League of Nations (1919-1947), but the press corps did include pictorial reporters, illustrators, and cartoonists. Among them were the creators of the Testament de Genève. After meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1922, Aloysius Derso and Emery Kelen, both Jewish expatriates from Hungary, would collaborate for some thirty years. Known for their humorous reports on current affairs and politics, they directed their gaze and their wit to the goings-on in the world of diplomacy at the League of Nations. In the Testament de Genève, Derso & Kelen’s […]