Edited by Jack Sanders

In 1918, while Henry Louis Mencken was editing The Smart Set in New York and working on The American Language in his native Baltimore, his best friend, Philip Goodman, a New York advertising man, bon vivant, and fledgling publisher, wrote a letter reminiscing about their old German-American neighborhood in the 1880s and 1890s. (Goodman actually had grown up in Philadelphia). He invented characters and events and wrote with irony and affection for those better times. Mencken rose instantly to the challenge and wrote a letter in similar vein. For three years, they tried to outwit each other in telling tall tales and catching the flavor of German-America in the late nineteenth century. Jack Sanders has reconstructed and annotated this correspondence, the most playful writing of Mencken's life.

“Superb, just right. . . . a pleasure to read.”; — Fred Hobson (author of Mencken: A Life) to Jack Sanders.

By Michael J. Kurtz

John Gottlieb Morris was the first librarian of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, founder of Lutherville, Maryland, and of the Lutherville Female Academy. He was an early geological and botanical scientist whose specimens from nature were fundamental in the development of the early Smithsonian Institution. As a nationally prominent Lutheran pastor he was instrumental in changing Lutheran liturgy in America from the German language to English. Born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1803, Morris lived through profound social, economic, and cultural change. From the relationship between geology and biblical revelation to the need for American leadership in American science, this talented and combative clergyman fought continually for principles that he believed advanced knowledge, culture, and morality.

By Stuart R. Bruchey, Denwood N. Kelly, Armand M. Shank, Jr., and Thomas S. Gordon

Foreword to the Catalogue by Richard G. Doty of the Smithsonian Institution

For much of early American history banks performed not only credit services but also provided the great bulk of the national money supply. Suspicion of public paper and its administrators among the Founders kept the government out of the business of issuing currency for decades. The first quarter of this monumental book is the fascinating story, told in a style agreeable to both general readers and specialists by the distinguished economic historian Stuart Bruchey, of the development of credit and banknote practices in the first half of the nineteenth century, along with the role of the Maryland General Assembly in chartering early banks. This account is followed by a comprehensive catalogue of early Maryland banknotes and their issuers—the first of its kind for Maryland—that will delight numismatic collectors, researchers, and all students of the history of banking.

By Jennifer F. Goldsborough

The Maryland Historical Society houses the largest and most representative collection of authentic Baltimore album quilts. The collection includes more than two dozen prime examples as well as a number of appliquéd chintz and red and green appliquéd quilts, the precursors of the Baltimore album quilt style, of which there are more than 300 surviving examples throughout the country. This book, a record of a major exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society (1994–1995), discusses the social history of the Baltimore album quilt (who made them and why) and the techniques that were used. It contains an important bibliography of quilting books. The author lectures widely on quilts and quilt history in major cities and in major museums on the eastern seaboard. A “must book” for traditional quilters everywhere.

By Christopher Weeks

Architectural historian G. E. Kidder Smith described Alexander Cochran (1913–1990) of Baltimore as an “architectural missionary.” The reference was remarkably acute, for Cochran, besides being devoted to modernism, was a highly romantic, deeply religious humanist who repeatedly stated his desire to keep the best of the past while adapting it to modern needs. He was profoundly devoted to social justice and the right of all to enjoy beauty. Ultimately, the power of his passion for modernism transformed his city and pointed the way to the renaissance of Baltimore's downtown and harbor area in the 1960s. A frequent collaborator with builder James Rouse, Cochran studied with Walter Gropius (of Bauhaus fame) at Harvard and returned to his native Baltimore determined to introduce modernist architectural ideas. His Lake Avenue house shocked Baltimore traditionalists but was influential throughout the country in promoting the style that came to be known as “contemporary” in the 1950s and 1960s. This book opens with a short biography of Cochran—peopled with the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, George Howe, Richard Neutra, and Eero Saarinen. The second half is a photographic portfolio of Cochran's most significant work.

By Thomas W. Spalding and Kathryn M. Kuranda

A history of an important urban Catholic parish (founded in 1841) that has survived radically changing demographics, decades of civic, mercantile, and industrial encroachment, and urban blight. The first half of the book (by Spalding) tells the social history of the parish and the changing ethnic groups that have been its congregations: Irish, Italian, and African-American, and how the church has adapted to their needs. The second half (by Kuranda) is an architectural history of the church, whose Georgian tower is one of the most important landmarks in the mid-Atlantic region. St. Vincent's is nationally famous for its midnight printers' masses (held after newspapers in the area went to press). The heroic story of St. Vincent's, now under the direction of the dynamic Father Dick Lawrence, will inspire Catholic clergy and laity in all urban areas.

By Robert I. Cottom and Mary Ellen Hayward

This superbly designed book presents archival illustrations, many in full-color, an incisive text, and colorful vignettes to capture the agony of this border (and slave-holding) state imprisoned by geography in the Civil War years. After Fort Sumter, the Lincoln administration could ill afford to lose Maryland, and the state, especially its principal city Baltimore—site of the first blood spilled when a mob attacked the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment—remained under military occupation for most of the war. Maryland was the site of  the greatest single day's carnage in American history, at Antietam Creek, and Marylanders on both sides of this brothers' war shot down one another at Front Royal and Gettysburg. Southern Maryland was a hotbed of clandestine Confederate activity, Baltimore a training ground for Union recruits, where citizens of doubtful loyalty to the Union were deported or jailed at Fort McHenry. Maryland was home to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, to the “Union Andersonville” at Point Lookout, and to John Wilkes Booth. All of the drama and tragedy of divided Maryland is captured in this outstanding chronicle.

By David R. Owen and Michael C. Tolley

Foreword by Frank L. Wiswall, Jr.

In early Maryland the admiralty courts profoundly affected the daily lives of the settlers, the great majority of whom lived within a few miles of the sea. This lively examination of the admiralty law system as it was transmitted from England to America is attractive to the general reader who is interested in the bearing of the colonial period on the development of American law in the early years of the Republic as well as to the specialist who is interested in how these courts worked and who used them with what results. Appendices include summaries and analyses of nearly 150 cases, never collected before, and the transcription of the record of a classic maritime case. Published by Carolina Academic Press in association with the Maryland Historical Society.

Note: This book is available through this catalog only to members of the Maryland Historical Society. All other orders to: Carolina Academic Press, 700 Kent Street, Durham NC 27701

Mapping Maryland: The Willard Hackerman Collection, published in 1998, is a handsome presentation of maps drawn from the collection of Willard Hackerman.The 64-page book is generously illustrated and includes eighteenth-century maps of Maryland, Virginia, and the Chesapeake Bay.