By the NYAM Library Team

Since 1995, the United Nations has celebrated World Book Day on April 23. We hope you’ll agree that the NYAM Library is world-class! Library Team members have each selected a book from our vast collection that means something to them. Perhaps these books will mean something for you as well—so endorse our selections in the comments or use the occasion to name books that mean something to you.

Andrea Byrne, Digital Technical Specialist:

Manuale del dilettante del caffè; ossia l’arte de prender sempre del buon caffè (Venice, 1830), translated from French into Italian and written by “M.H.” attributed to Alexandre Martin, first encountered as part of our project with Adam Matthew Digital on food and drink. “It was such an adorable book. It is in a clamshell, and once you open up the clamshell, there is this other smaller compartment inside where the book is stored, and the book is smaller than my hand. Very cute!”

Miranda Schwartz, Cataloger:

Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica … (Basel, 1543). “The publication of this book was a key moment in the study of anatomy, and its illustrations are one of a kind. It’s the starting point for so much scholarship and I think it’s emblematic of the richness of our collections.”

Arlene Shaner, Historical Collections Librarian:

Sylvia’s Family management : a book of thrift and cottage economy : a practical cyclopædia of useful knowledge, containing what it is important to know on the essentials of home economy … (London/New York, 188?)

“I’ve chosen this book, rather than one of our early books, because I think it speaks to the experiences many of us have been had during a long period of isolation, without the services we normally take for granted, and how that has prompted people to do things they would not have tried before (so many loaves of sourdough bread!). These kinds of household guides were very popular, and they offered DIY instructions for everything from home brewing to gardening to sewing your own clothing.”

Paul Theerman, Director:

Peter Clemens Kronfeld et al., The human eye in anatomical transparencies; explanatory text [by] Peter C. Kronfeld … anatomical transparencies [by] Gladys McHugh … historical appendix [by] Stephen L. Polyak (Rochester, NY, 1943). “Not only are the book’s transparencies stunning, the work points to the collaborative nature of modern medicine as well as the desire, or even the need, to keep current with ways of representing the human body.”

On World Book Day, we invite you to marvel at the richness of our Library’s holdings, and, above all, to pick up a book!