The third weekend each month, the book sale room opens at the University Heights branch of San Diego Public Library. Of course, I would forget and come happenstance while walking somewhere else on Sunday about 90 minutes before closure. Inside I went, searching for older titles to take home.
Current cultural, progressive values are imposed all about us, with the greatest casualty being history and how the past is revised and censored to match these same norms. The Telegraph gives good example with Nov. 20, 2023 story (headline and dek): “Roman emperor was trans, says museum. Elagabalus will be referred to as she after claims in classical texts that the emperor asked to be called ‘lady’. Except: “Some historians believe these accounts may simply have been a Roman attempt at character assassination”.
Having been a student of ancient history, particularly Greece and Rome, I would side with the scholars. Further citing The Telegraph: “Historians have said feminine behavior would have been a dishonor to men in Rome, and suggested that accounts of Elagabalus’ life are replete with the worst accusations that could be levelled at a Roman because they are character assassinations”. Right. Contextual nuances matter and shouldn’t be subverted by retroactively imposing value judgements on someone who lived 1,800 years ago. We also can’t fully assess race and prejudice: He was Syrian, not Roman.
Situations like this make books matter more than ever. I want to build a personal library of titles that more closely reflect the time in which they were written. The past is the past. We don’t need some horrific version of time travel, where the present obliterates what was; but that is the trend. Printed materials, particularly released before the Millennium, are immeasurably valuable historical assets.
The Featured Image, taken using Leica Q2, shows off five of the books purchased for a buck each: Society in America (three-volume set) by Harriet Martineau; The Pilgrim in Old England by Amory Howe Bradford; and The United States; An Outline of Political History, 1492-1871 by Goldwin Smith.
The Martineau texts are copyright/published 1837 and stamped August 1921 by San Diego Public Library. The Bradford book is copyright 1893. According to Amazon’s public domain reprint description: “This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it”. Smith’s history also is 1893. None of the five indicates a printed date.
I won’t offer synopsis without having read the books, although I skimmed enough on November 19 to purposely choose each one. Perhaps that will be topic of future post(s). Photo vitals, aperture manually set: f/2.8, ISO 250, 1/15 sec, 28mm; 5:04 p.m. PST, same day.