SchlagerBlog

Today’s New York Times has a lengthy article about Barack Obama’s time as a law professor at the University of Chicago. At one point, the reporter comments on Obama’s “admiration for the soaring but plainspoken speeches of Frederick Douglass” and quotes him (according to a student, I’m guessing) as saying, “No one speaks this way anymore.” Indeed. Over on our Milestone Documents blog, Bradley Skelcher recently wrote an interesting post about Douglass’s Fourth of July speech. Check it out. And readers out there can look forward to the entry on Douglass in our forthcoming Milestone Documents of American Leaders.

Our colleagues at Salem Press, who are handling all of the orders for our Milestone Documents series, have added a useful feature to their Web site: a Google Maps mashup that shows the locations of libraries that have purchased a given title. To see how it works, go to the information page for Milestone Documents in American History, and scroll down until you see the “Map this title” window. Just pick a state to see the libraries that have purchased the set in that state. The only caveat is that, as Salem notes on the site, “not every institution holding [this title] is identified on this map.” This is due to a technicality in the way in which some institutions place their orders. Nevertheless, I think this is a great and useful feature for people who are trying to find our content.