Book News
Library cuts dead president some slack.
It was more than two centuries late, but a copy of a library book George Washington borrowed has been returned to a New York library. The former president borrowed “The Law of Nations,” by Emer de Vattel, on Oct. 5, 1789, according to the records of the New York Society Library.
Staff discovered it was missing when they conducted an inventory of books in the library’s 1789-1792 ledger earlier this year. Washington had never returned the book — an essay on international affairs — to the library, which shared a building with the federal government at the time and was used by members of Congress and the cabinet, as well as the president.
The former president’s overdue fines, it has been calculated, would theoretically amount to $300,000.
After staff at Mount Vernon, Washington’s former home in Virginia, learned of the situation, they got in touch with the library offering to replace the book with another copy of the same edition.
Two hundred and twenty-one years later, “The Law of Nations” has finally come home, with no mention made of the fine.
First Lines
Backseat Saints,by Joshilyn JacksonIt was an airport gypsy who told me that I had to kill my husband. She may have been the first to say the words out loud, but she was only giving voice to a thing I’d been trying not to know for a long, long time. When she said that it was him or me, the words rang out like church bells, shuddering through my bones. For two days, they sat in the pit of my belly, making me sick. I had no reason to trust her, and I’d as soon take life advice from a Chinese take-out fortune cookie as believe in tarot cards, but I’d lived with Thom Grandee long enough to recognize the truth, no matter how it came to me.
So on Thursday morning, I got my Pawpy’s old gun, and I lay for my husband near Wildcat Bluff. Thom liked to run a trail out there. It was too far from the picnic grounds to attract most day-trippers, and he got his miles in early, when he could trust it would be his alone. That day he had me for secret company.
Not two hours ago, I’d gotten up before the sun to make him real biscuits. I’d cut Crisco into flour until it felt soft, like powdered velvet. I’d mixed the dough and rolled it and pressed out circles with the tops of a juice glass. I’d fried bacon and then cooked two eggs sunny-side up in the grease. I had loaded his grits with salt and cheese and put thick pats of butter to melt on everything that looked like it could hold butter. There must have been a thousand calories in fat alone floating on that plate.
I’d often made him devil-breakfasts like this after fights, so I hadn’t thought of it as a last meal. It was more of an absurd apology. Like me saying, “Baby, I’m scared I might blow holes in you later, but look, I made you the naughty eggs.”
Children’s picture-book best sellers
1. The Sandwich Shop, by Queen Rania Al Abdullah; illus. by Kelly DiPucchio
2. The Lion & the Mouse, by Jerry Pinkney
3. Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary, by Simon Beecroft
4. Waddle!, Rufus Butler Seder
5. The Quiet Book, by Deborah Underwood; illus. Renata Liwska
