I love making glue books, and collage culture in general. I try to make it to a flea market at least 5 times a year to collect old ephemra, printed matter and a book. Often, choosing the book is an excrutiating task which basically revolves around this: “Which of these books can I destroy while creating a new work of art without feeling too bad about it?” I try to remind myself that most of the books will end up in the trash if no one buys them, so I am doing no great harm. However, this relunctance continues at home, where I read and scan over the book to make sure there is nothing in it that needs to be saved.

My latest purchase was Modern Times and the Living Past, by Henry Elson. Elson was, at the time of the book’s publication (1921), a Lecturer on History at New York University. It is a history text for school kids, probably junior high or high school, and covers history from the dawn of civilization through the end of “The World War.” In scanning the book for salvagable content, I soon found myself receiving my own history lesson, though not on Alexander the Great or Mary Queen of Scots or the other condensed stories in the book. Instead, I found a lesson on the great amount of intellectual racism still present in America in 1921. And no, we’re not talking about Selma, Alabama here, so all you New York City better-than-thou’s can wake up now: racism wasn’t a deep south, redneck phenomenon. It was often packaged and waxed eloquently by the big city professors. And we all know that supporting bigotry with reasoning, oratory and persuasiveness is much scarier than being that way because that’s “how your daddy raised ya.” (more…)