What’s New in the New Year

Fine Books’ editor Rebecca Rego Barry on our exciting new content By Rebecca Rego Barry

We’re beginning the New Year with a bang! Fine Books & Collections is bursting with exciting new content for book collectors. As you may have noticed in the past few months, we’ve started adding more book reviews and interviews to our e-letters. Our January issue launches a new monthly department—Catalogues Received—to list all of the dealer catalogues that are sent to us within the last 30 days (book dealers, take note!). In addition to the e-letter, we’re publishing plenty of new content on our blog and even posting updates and book giveaways on Facebook. So if you’re looking for good reading between issues, be sure to join us.

Our 2010 kick-off issue features an engrossing look at the Jack Kerouac estate battle, following last year’s forgery case. It’s a dark, complicated tale that will surely continue to stir debate this year. Columnist Jeremy Dibbell also dips into the shadier side of the book world this month, revisiting the 1971 theft of an Audubon first edition from Union College.

Nicholas Basbanes introduces us to an accomplished scholar-collector in his column, while our digest puts the spotlight on a librarian who single-handedly built the country’s largest collection of Jewish cookbooks. In addition, we have a book review of two new cartography books, an interview with the curator of the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, and Ian McKay’s priceless auction report.

I think you’ll agree, we’re off to a good start, and it’s going to be a terrific year. Best wishes for 2010!