by Jeffrey A. Rothermel Captain's Log August 15-16, 2026 Seminole Valley Farm Museum One weekend a year, I close my environmentally controlled and comfortable showroom and travel north to the humid and misty riverbanks of the Cedar Rapids. This was my fifth year of selling books from a tent in harmony with mother nature and her occasional outbursts. Why dare the misfortune of damaged paper from moisture? Believe it or not... nothing better than a rainy outdoor weekend of a

There are two versions of the 1875 Illustrated Historical Atlas State of Iowa which occasionally confuse both Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and human beings. This essay will touch upon some of the factors that cause variances in value in different markets.

Jeffrey A. Rothermel April 29, 2026 Captain's Log: The WW2 Honorable Discharge Certificate for the Army of the United States An interesting leaf of ephemera recently entered the bookstore. It was a piece of paper printed on both sides in 1945. The front side of the document contained the bottom line. It was a certificate stating Private First Class Hesseltine "is hereby Honorably Discharged from the military service of the United States of America... 22 October 1945." The

A single English word can have multiple meanings. This essay jumps into the dictionary rabbit hole concerning a 1943 Webster's New Illustrated Dictionary.

When the United States entered the First World War it was using the term "aëroplane." Eventually, Americans were using the term "airplane." Read how the U.S. Army tackled infantry tactics with the airplane during WWI.

by Jeffrey A. Rothermel January 18, 2026 Captain's Log: The Mysteries of the Politics of Peace The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Nanh for the prize in 1967. Dr. King wrote to the Nobel Institute on January 25, 1967 saying: "... I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged to call him my friend. Let me share with you some things I know about him. You will find in this single human being an awesome range of a

Determining how many pages are in a book: "pagination." Care to guess the number of pages in this book?

Bookstores deal in obvious secrets. Some mysteries are not easily solved. The secrets of solving book mysteries.

Bookselling in a snowstorm. Nine inches of snow fell in Iowa City, Iowa on small business Saturday. The storm disrupted in person book browsing on Small Business Saturday, but not internet book orders that continued to surge.

HUBBARD BROTHERS 1882 LEATHER BIBLE. The original 1611 King James Version along with the 1881 Revision in parallel columns with full notations.