“Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War Through Reconstruction” ($24.95)
“Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War Through Reconstruction” by Linda B. Osborne has been published by the Library of Congress and Harry N. Abrams Inc. This book for young people draws on interviews in the Library of Congress collections with former slaves to convey the aspirations, sorrows, courage and hopes of ordinary people living through this period.
Osborne, a senior writer and editor in the Library’s Publishing Office, mined the Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives as well as materials in the Library’s Manuscript, Prints and Photographs, Rare Book and Special Collections, and Geography and Map divisions for this work that focuses on the experiences of African-American children.
More than 80 archival images complement the text. Major events covered include the rise of the domestic slave trade, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Republican Congress’s Reconstruction policies.
From Charles Cowley, an enslaved child who had no shoes to wear as he walked through the snow, to Richard Slaughter, who enlisted in the Union Army at 17, this book reveals the personal hardships and courageous endurance of black youth in 19th-century America.
This full-color hardback book is available for $24.95 from the Library of Congress Sales Shop and in bookstores nationwide.
“World War II: 365 Days” ($29.95)
“Dec. 7, 1941,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Congress and the nation, was “a date which will live in infamy.” The phrase has become shorthand for Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, which triggered the nation’s involvement in World War II.
That date—and many others in the World War II era—are featured in a new book titled “World War II: 365 Days” by Margaret E. Wagner, which has been published by Harry N. Abrams Inc. in association with the Library of Congress.
Drawn from the vast collections of the Library of Congress are photographs, maps, political cartoons, drawings, posters and paintings created by people of many nations that reveal the drama and complexity of this epic conflict.
“’World War II: 365 Days” does not merely recreate the war as contemporaries experienced it,” said historian David M. Kennedy in his introduction to the book. “It also offers perspectives and images that were denied to the generation that fought the war, but are now, thanks to the Library of Congress’ researchers, available to us. Together the text and illustrations that constitute this book weave a memorable literary as well as visual tapestry of history’s most fearsome conflict.”
The book is organized in 12 broad themes, beginning with the build-up to war and ending with its aftermath. Daily entries at the bottom of each left-hand page comprise a separate running diary of noteworthy World War II-related events. More than 600 color and black-and-white images—many rarely seen—are included. Vivid text places each of the images in context.
Excerpts from letters, diaries, speeches, and memoirs that are included in the text help capture the drama and scale of the war. Among these are quotes and images drawn from the papers of 19 World War II veterans that are housed in the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress as part of the Veterans History Project. The Veterans History Project was created in 2000 by Congress to preserve the first-hand remembrances of veterans of major conflicts beginning with World War I. Approximately 60,000 individual submissions comprise the collection to date, with many stories accessible online.
Both of these new titles and other Library publications are available in bookstores nationwide and through the Library of Congress Shop, (888) 682-3557.