December 11, 2010 |
We are told with numbing regularity these days that "print is dead" and that the Digital Age soon will sweep the bound, mass-produced book into history's bin of extinct curiosities alongside species once similarly numerous, like the woolly mammoth and the passenger pigeon. We will receive our wisdom, information and literary entertainment not from printed pages but in recovered pulses of code. This is to be the e-book epoch, the era of the Kindle. What does it signify, then, that in London this week, an auction at Sotheby's achieved a record price for a printed book ?
December 8, 2010
' Naturalist John James Audubon's "Birds of America" sold at auction in London on Tuesday for $10 million, making it the world's most expensive book. FOR THE RECORD: "Birds of America": A Quick Takes item in the Dec. 8 Calendar section said that a rare edition of John James Audubon's "Birds of America" had been sold at auction for $10 million, making it the world's most expensive book. That figure excluded the buyer's premium, which was added later and brought the price to $11,567,575.
May 28, 2010 |
The oil spill disaster off the coast of my home state of Louisiana is stark evidence that humans have an awesome power to change the natural landscape, often for the worse. But landscapes also have the power to change us, as John James Audubon was reminded when he arrived in Louisiana in 1821. In Louisiana, Audubon encountered a biblical abundance of wildlife that transformed him and his bird art, enlarging his sense of possibility and refining his genius as an observer of the natural world.
December 16, 2005 |
A rare complete edition of John James Audubon's "The Birds of America" was auctioned in New York for $5.6 million, ending three years of legal wrangling over a decision by a financially strapped Providence, R.I., library to dispose of its most valuable holding. The 1838 edition of ornithologist Audubon's most famous work went to a person bidding by telephone, said Benedetta Roux, spokeswoman for Christie's auction house. She did not identify the bidder.
December 31, 2004 |
As a child growing up in Cincinnati in the 1930s, John Ruthven would sit on the banks of the Ohio River sketching wildlife and imagining journeys with famed naturalist John James Audubon. Today, the 80-year-old artist is a National Medal of Arts recipient. "It was the crowning moment for what I have tried to accomplish with my work," Ruthven says of the honor he received in November from President Bush. Ruthven, often called by peers and fans a "20th century Audubon," began his career illustrating containers of Play-Doh.
October 10, 2004 |
Great talents have deep roots. Richard Rhodes illustrates this with his "John James Audubon: The Making of an American," an unpretentiously titled book that is more than a mere biography: It is a comprehensive history of a man and his era.