[Literature] Salinger, J.D. American author of Catcher in the Rye. Typed letter signed from Salinger to his friend Eileen Paddison. January 25, 1972. One page, typed on Salinger’s characteristic goldenrod paper, signed boldly in ink at the foot: “Love to you, Eileen — Jerry.” A letter chronicling friendship between Salinger.....

Salinger, J.D.  American author of Catcher in the Rye. Typed letter signed “JDS”. 1972. Written during his extended correspondence with Eileen Paddison, this two-page letter offers sustained reflection on Taoist philosophy as a lived discipline rather than abstract doctrine. Salinger frames himself as “a cluttered man...writer, parent, chauffeur, cook, snow-remover,”.....

Abraham Lincoln and Civil War Figures Album of pasted oval portraits with signatures underneath each image. 1861. Features most notably Abraham Lincoln with a pasted signature below his image. This mid-nineteenth-century photographic album assembles oval portraits of political and military figures during the Civil War era, including a pasted signature.....

[Civil War] [African American Military] [Slavery] Unknown official. Slave impressment receipt and certificate, 1865 documents the Confederate government’s forced mobilization of enslaved labor during the final phase of the Civil War under legislation authorizing the use of enslaved people for military purposes. Issued in Florida under the February 17, 1864.....

Henri Matisse. Autograph Letter Signed. One-page handwritten letter, written entirely in Matisse’s hand and signed “H. Matisse,” dated November 2, 1949, in French. Written late in his career, when he was internationally acknowledged as one of the greatest living artists of the twentieth century, the letter offers an unusually candid.....

[Medicine][Malaria] Ross, Ronald. Memoirs (1923), signed first edition reflecting on the creation of modern tropical medicine authored by the physician whose 1897 demonstration of the malarial parasite within the mosquito established vector transmission and transformed global public health. Published in 1923, two decades after Ross became the first British recipient.....

[Mathematics] Klein, Felix. Autograph Letter Signed, 10 November 1918, written in German to a former student and colleague, directly references Einstein’s recently published General Theory of Relativity and comments on the work of the International Mathematical Education Commission. Composed in the closing days of the First World War, the letter.....

[WWII][Philippine Occupation] Harwell, Lee W. World War II military archive, 1941–1945, recording the service of a North Carolina enlisted artilleryman from prewar mobilization through the American occupation of the Philippines following Japan’s surrender. Harwell, born in 1918 in Mooresville, North Carolina, enlisted in April 1941 and trained at Fort Bragg.....

[Engineering][Physics] Three manuscript volumes (1878–1879) compiled in Germany, notes on nineteenth-century study of applied physics, mechanics, thermodynamics, and fluid engineering at a moment when the German states were consolidating their position as leaders in industrial science and technical education. Produced during the height of Imperial Germany’s expansion of polytechnic institutes.....

[Ralph Waldo Emerson][Transcendentalism] Worth, J. Estes. Unpublished biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, circa 1950s, a mid-twentieth-century scholarly interpretation of Emerson grounded primarily in close reading of his journals and early intellectual development. Produced by a Boston University pharmacology professor. The manuscript concentrates on Emerson’s Unitarian and Transcendentalist networks, his education.....

Tyndall, John. Autograph Letter Signed, 19 July 1872, written in the year he published major work on atmospheric heat absorption that established the physical basis of what is now termed the greenhouse effect. Addressed to poet Matthew Arnold, the letter situates Tyndall within the intellectual networks of Victorian Britain at.....

Rodin, Auguste. Father of modern sculpture. Autograph Letter Signed, 27 May 1910, a document from the mature career of the sculptor widely regarded as a foundational figure in modern sculpture and a central presence in late nineteenth and early twentieth century European art. Written at a moment when Rodin’s international.....

[African American Military][World War II] World War II photographic and document archive relating to service in the 43rd Amphibian Truck Battalion, 1945, a firsthand visual and documentary record of African American participation in the Battle of Iwo Jima. Taken during the climactic Pacific campaign of February–March 1945, the archive documents.....