Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies

FABS 19th Century Zoom Group
2026-07-16 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Join this congenial group for conversation about all things bibliophilic and 19th-century! We meet monthly on the third Thursday.
To be added to the list for links, contact Jennifer Larson: info@fabsocieties.org

FABS Bindings Zoom: Dr. Stephanie Stillo of the Library of Congress
2026-07-20 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Dr. Stephanie Stillo, Chief, Rare Books and Special Collection Division at the Library of Congress will show us some of the recently acquired bindings in the collection. The Library of Congress actively adds artists’ books, fine and design bindings, and other treasures to the collection.
July 20, Monday, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific.
For a link please contact Jennifer Larson: info@fabsocieties.org

A Haggadah, A Collection, A Synagogue: The Harold Greenbaum Rare Book Collection with Jane Rothstein
2026-07-23 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by NOBS

7:00 PM 8:30 PM

Congregation Mishkan Or, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Beachwood, Ohio, is the steward of an extraordinary collection of more than 200 rare volumes of Hebrew and other Jewish books from the 15th-20th centuries. Dr. Harold Greenbaum, a Cleveland physician, donated this collection to his synagogue, Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, one of Mishkan Or’s legacy congregations, in the late 1960s. There it remained safe, but relatively unexplored until Fairmount Temple’s merger with The Temple-Tifereth Israel in 2024, when librarian and archivist Jane Rothstein began to inventory and research this hidden treasure. Aside from being amazed and delighted, what does a synagogue librarian and her library do with a collection like this?
Along the way, Mishkan Or received a grant from the State Library of Ohio and the Ohio Preservation Council, with funds from the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS), for the conservation of one book from the Greenbaum Collection. We chose a Passover Haggadah published in Venice in 1663. This conservation project offers an opportunity to treat one very damaged book and explore the celebration of Passover across centuries. The project also helps open a window onto the collection, raising awareness of it within the congregation and the wider community, and prompting conversations about the best ways to care for and share these books.
Jane will discuss the collection and share volumes and photos. She will also discuss the journey of the Haggadah, from its publication in 17th-century Venice to its home in a 21st-century synagogue library in Ohio and through the conservation process.
For a link, go here: https://www.nobsbooks.org/events

Celebrating People's History with Josh MacPhee
2026-07-27 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
The Celebrate People’s History poster series has organized and curated by Josh MacPhee since 1998. The over 200 posters in the ongoing series are rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition of mass-produced and distributed political propaganda, but detourned to embody principles of democracy, inclusion, and group participation in the writing and interpretation of history. Over more than 25 years, MacPhee has worked with hundreds of artists, designers, authors, students, activists, and organizers to find events, groups, and people who have moved forward the collective struggle of humanity to create a more equitable and just world, who in turn have generated a diverse set of posters that bring to life successful moments in the history of social justice struggles. The posters tell stories from the subjective position of the creators, and are often the stories of underdogs, those written out of history. The goal of this project is not to tell a definitive history, but to suggest a new relationship to the past, where all of us see the crafting of history as something we both can and should participate in.
A virtual presentation by Josh MacPhee, designer, artist, archivist, activist, and founding member of both Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and Interference Archive
Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_F3wbtJfoTQew3_5LZ4aU_g#/registration

Celebrating People’s History
2026-07-27 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Celebrate People’s History poster series has organized and curated by Josh MacPhee since 1998. The over 200 posters in the ongoing series are rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition of mass-produced and distributed political propaganda, but detourned to embody principles of democracy, inclusion, and group participation in the writing and interpretation of history. Over more than 25 years, MacPhee has worked with hundreds of artists, designers, authors, students, activists, and organizers to find events, groups, and people who have moved forward the collective struggle of humanity to create a more equitable and just world, who in turn have generated a diverse set of posters that bring to life successful moments in the history of social justice struggles. The posters tell stories from the subjective position of the creators, and are often the stories of underdogs, those written out of history. The goal of this project is not to tell a definitive history, but to suggest a new relationship to the past, where all of us see the crafting of history as something we both can and should participate in.
A virtual presentation by Josh MacPhee, designer, artist, archivist, activist, and founding member of both Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and Interference Archive.
To register, click here.

FABS Living With Books: Decorations in the Library and Reading Equipment
2026-07-28 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
On July 28 join your host Reid Byers and the gang for another lively discussion about Living With Books. Our topics this month: (1) “Prints, Paintings, and Decorations in the Library” and (2) “Reading Equipment.”
For a link please contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
2026-08-03 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Troublemaker tells the wild and unlikely story of Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous Mitford Girls, a British aristocrat-turned-American Communist, famous for exposés like The American Way of Death; this biography brings her astonishing self-transformation to life with a riveting, often hilarious account of trading wealth and status for a life of radical activism.
Who could predict that a British aristocrat would so energize American antifascist and civil rights struggles that Time magazine would crown her “Queen of the Muckrakers”? Jessica Mitford, always known as Decca, was brought up by an eccentric English family to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the rights of others. Her beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives. Decca ran away to America to forge a rebel’s life. As this richly researched book details, Decca broke the Mitford mold. Instead of settling for life as a professional Beauty, she fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War, became an American Communist and pioneered witty, hugely popular journalism, including her 1963 blockbuster The American Way of Death. Decca dedicated her life to social justice and proved herself an immensely effective ally, but she also injected laughter into all her political work, annoying some activists with her relentless antics but encouraging many others to find joy in the struggle. From famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock to best friend Maya Angelou, her anti-authoritarian irreverence had a profound impact on American culture.
A virtual presentation by Carla Kaplan, author, historian, and Associate Professor, English Department, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
To register, click here.

Eugene O’Neill and Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Tao House—a California Story
2026-08-10 18:00 - 19:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Book Club of California
Few people realize that Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize, was written in California in 1939-41. After winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, O’Neill and his third wife, the actress Carlotta Monterey, built Tao House just outside Danville, California. Realizing that his writing career was coming to an end, due to illness, he needed to find a way—literally, the tao—to write the most personal and difficult plays he had ever attempted, also including The Iceman Cometh and A Touch of the Poet.
Tao House was inspired by Chinese principles, which his California-born wife helped to implement in an effort to create a setting that was conducive to his writing these consummate works. It also reflects the Spanish colonial history of California. William Davies King’s new book argues that Long Day’s Journey, O’Neill’s most deeply autobiographical play, emerges from the tao of that house and could only have been written then and there—in that convergence of Irish, Spanish, and Chinese cultures and on the verge of World War II.
King’s book adopts an unusual form, using the diaries of Eugene and Carlotta, to suggest that the play might be read as a product of a marriage that was soon to go haywire but for a brief moment allowed for the creation of a work of genius, which was, in effect, the genius of Tao House. Long Day’s Journey was only published and produced after O’Neill’s death, thirteen years it was written, but it has been performed many times worldwide by the finest actors, and it remains the quintessential American play. Tao House has been a National Historic Site, maintained by the National Park Service, for fifty years. Professor King will take us into the site and into the play and into the marriage, and he will show us many items from his extensive collection of photographs and documents of Eugene and Carlotta O’Neill.
An in-person and virtual presentation by William Davies King, author, editor, scholar, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theater and Dance, University of California Santa Barbara, California.
To. register, click here.

California Eden: Heritage Landscapes of the Golden State
2026-08-17 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Book Club of California
For many people, the concept of landscape is associated with gardens, especially estate gardens. California Eden reaches far beyond the elite circle of private estates; this book highlights a wide range of landscapes from the professional to the vernacular and delves deep into the cultural and historical significance of these landscapes, revealing the untold stories of the people who have inhabited and shaped them over the centuries.
Co-editors Christine Edstrom O’Hara and Susan Chamberlin bring together these voices from the landscape architecture community to discuss and present the history of both rural and urban landscapes and how they shape (and are shaped by) nature and the people who design them. Entries highlight famous and beloved estate gardens but also more frequently overlooked landscapes such as shopping malls, streetscapes, sports venues, and vernacular sites.
Covering a range of places from a military installation on the California-Mexico border, to the campus of Stanford University, and the Japanese American gardens of San Diego, California Eden speaks to design as well as the challenges of historic preservation of these-often ephemeral places.
A virtual presentation by Susan Chamberlin, author, editor, landscape historian, and licensed landscape architect and Christine Edstrom O’Hara, author and Professor of Landscape Architecture, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California
To register, click here.

Out of the Gutters: How California Comix Saved Comics
2026-08-24 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Book Club of California
Out of the Gutters: Obscenity, Censorship, and Transgression, edited by Jorge J. Santos and Patrick S. Lawrence, explores US comics that have been challenged for their boundary-breaking content. Covering well-known underground figures like R. Crumb and Charles Burns, newcomers such as C. Spike Trotman and Emil Ferris, and mainstream creators including Chris Claremont and Archie Goodwin, the collection dives into the market economics of transgression, historical representations of graphic violence, the ever-changing meaning of pornography, sex-positive comics by BIPOC authors, and queerness in pop-culture mega-properties. Comics have long been and continue to be a subject of moral panics, but instead of targeting raw sex like Crumb’s counter-culture provocations in the last century, censors now focus on affirmations of nonheteronormative identity even where sex isn’t prominent, as in Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. And while violence is a constant in comics, stories that acknowledge nationalist violence, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the innovative Blazing Combat, have also been blacklisted.
Come join Professors Lawrence and Santos to discuss how comics creators resisted these censorship paradigms from their outset and how these transgressors paved the way for contemporary comics culture in both narrative and publishing terms. We will especially highlight California counterculture’s special role in saving comic books from bland irrelevance. Learn how the implementation of the Comics Code Authority and the censorship paradigm established by 1973’s Miller v California nearly vanquished the comic book industry altogether, as well as how stalwart industry creators, such as Archie Goodwin of Warren Publishing and the outrageously crude members of the Comix movement, boldly resisted, either seeking ways around the censorship apparatus or deliberately thumbing their noses at it. Come learn how San Francisco became a hot bed of anticensorship attitudes through the history of the comic book and the graphic novel while we consider what lessons we may learn from 20th century censorship to face 21st century challenges.
A virtual presentation by Jorge J. Santos Jr., author, editor, and Associate Professor, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US, College of the Holy Cross, Worchester, Massachusetts and Patrick S. Lawrence, author, editor, and Professor of English, University of South Carolina, Lancaster.
To register, click here.

Charles W. Chesnutt: Symposium (In Person)
2026-09-26 08:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Western Reserve Historical Society, The Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, The Rowfant Club, Charles W. Chesnutt Digital Archive, The Cuyahoga County Public Library, and the Cleveland Public Library.
The Second Charles W. Chesnutt Symposium [In Person Only]
Saturday, September 26, 2026
8:00 AM through 5:30 PM
At the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Registration Fee: $80.00 for standard participants and $50.00 for full time students
Fully Refundable Date: August 15, 2026
https://www.chesnutt2026.com or www.rowfant.org
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was arguably the most important African American author (fiction, essays and advocacy) to ply his trade in America between Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance; he was certainly the most important author to come from Ohio during this period, and his influence was clearly national. It is also important to note that several of his novels were not published until 50 years after his death, largely because they were considered too provocative for their time.
Featuring presentations by:
Stephanie Browner, PhD: The New School
Tess Chakkalakal, PhD: Bowdoin College
Charles Duncan, PhD: William Peace University
William Hardwig, PhD: University of Tennessee Knoxville
Kenneth M. Price, PhD: University of Nebraska Lincoln
Regennia Williams, PhD: Western Reserve Historical Society Cleveland
There will also be opportunities to see the Rowfant Club of Cleveland, take a white-glove tour of the Chesnutt archives, and interact with the Cleveland community. Continental breakfast and a full buffet luncheon will be served; local accommodation will be available near the Case Western Reserve University campus, including the Glidden House.
Cosponsors: The Western Reserve Historical Society, The Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, Charles W. Chesnutt Digital Archive, The Cuyahoga County Public Library, and the Cleveland Public Library.
https://chesnuttarchive.org/
Questions? email cuw123@aol.com

Eileen Buckholtz on "Queens of Code"
2026-12-15 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baltimore Bibliophiles
Our speaker for December 15, 2036 is author Eileen Buckholtz. Her 2026 book, Queens of Code, explores the increasingly important role of women in the dawn of the computer age and beyond, within the clandestine halls of the super secret National Security Agency.

For a link contact Binnie Syril Braunstein, bsbgc@aol.com
