Verso

The week leading up to that day when we swap out the old calendar for the new is always a favorite for taking stock of all that has happened—from the mundane to the milestone—over the past 12 months and gearing up to embark on the dozen to come. As we here at Verso took a look back with an eye to the months ahead, we compiled a list of 10 posts from the past year that we think have captured—each in its own way—some essence of what it is that we set out to do here on the blog.

It wasn't an "Aha!" moment but rather one of the many "Hmmm" moments most scholars come across on a daily basis. And this one was dated Dec. 26, 1795.

Astronomers throughout history have searched the skies in hopes of locating the Star of Bethlehem, the famed star of scripture. Meanwhile botanists have found their very own "Star of Bethlehem" among the Orchid family.

This publishing season, books on the American Revolution and Founding Fathers have garnered tough reviews and a little controversy, but one book stands out as a once-in-a-generation reassessment of scholarship on that subject: The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution.

"What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself." The baptismal certificate of Ludwig van Beethoven is dated Dec. 17, 1770. Since custom dictated that families not wait longer than 24 hours to baptize a newborn, we assume that he began his tumultuous life on Dec. 16, in Bonn, Germany.

Another post in a series from the cataloger of the Anne M. Cranston cookbook collection, which consists of approximately 4,400 British and American cookbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Finding a rare and endangered plant species in the wild is hard enough. What is even more difficult is spotting an albino form of that flower!

With this post we introduce a new Verso series from Shelley Kresan, one of the rare book catalogers in the Library. She is in the process of cataloging the Anne M. Cranston cookbook collection