After a lunch of mulligatawny soup and roast mutton on a wintry New Year’s Day in 1900, Miss Frank E. Buttolph struck upon a novel idea. “I stopped in the Columbia Restaurant for lunch and thought it might be interesting to file a bill of fare at the library,” Buttolph wrote in a letter dated February 14, noting the restaurant that was located in Manhattan’s Union Square. “A week later the thought occurred, why not preserve others?” Buttolph — whose given name was Frances but who preferred to be addressed as Frank — was already an avid collector of postcards with pictures of lighthouses. Preserving menus suited her penchant for collecting unique and colorful ephemera.
Soon after, the idiosyncratic Buttolph petitioned the New York Public Library’s director, John Shaw Billings, to enlist the library’s help with preserving menus from around the world that she would collect on its behalf. Despite Buttolph’s notoriously prickly disposition (her tirades against whistling and untidy desks were legendary), the library agreed to award her a voluntary position as menu archivist.
Ah, the Lower East Side of Manhattan – alphabet-lettered streets, mangy storefronts, dilapidated tenements with bathtubs in kitchens, apartment doors secured by iron rods in floor traps… probably clocking these days in at three grand a month’s rent? (Just checked Craigslist; that’s lowballing it!) But let’s backtrack a bit, time travel with the always amusing Sam Lipsyte and his wry comic latest, No One Left to Come Looking For You. Perhaps the title is clunky, but this novel is generally nimble – a capable intrigue so enhanced by atmosphere and pop detail that they command as much attention as the storyline.
Jünger’s book had obvious significance in 1939, at a time when the globe was about to be engulfed in wars that pitted fascism against democracy. For decades, many believed that the age of despotism was long past. But the current rise of populist demagogues and autocrats, promising a better world — if we only abandon notions of rights, individual liberties, and respect for minorities — proves otherwise. History appears to be surreal: maintaining liberty in the face of totalitarian fantasy calls for vigilance. Jünger’s cautionary tale may be more resonant now than when it was first published.
For Crawford, a Scottish journalist and broadcaster, a border is almost always a bad idea. “The Edge of the Plain” pulls history, travelogue and reportage into an ambitious investigation of “this vast network of lines … running all over the earth.” Crawford visits the stone remnants of the Antonine Wall, which marked the Roman Empire’s northern frontier. He hikes the shifting Alpine watershed that separates Italy from Austria. He writes about the borderless homelands of the Samí, the Indigenous people of the Scandinavian peninsula. But time and again the book returns to scenes of cruelty and brutality — to damaged landscapes and shattered lives on the militarized borders of today’s world. Crawford quotes an environmental activist: “Wherever there are borders … that’s where you are going to find the most concentrated injustice.”
With its modest title, “Pests” might be mistakenly shelved with mouse-proofing guides. But Bethany Brookshire’s new book is something far more ambitious. A lively and fascinating work of science writing, “Pests” explores, as its subtitle promises, “how humans create animal villains” — including, naturally, mice.