History

The Information Master by Jacob Soll

Terror in Michigan by Arnie Bernstein

The Information Master: The Rise and Fall of Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Library

Jacob Soll

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Jacob Soll's latest book is a study of Jean-Baptist Colbert (1619-1683), the government administrator who, following the exile of Cardinal Mazarin, swiftly rose to become Louis XIV's influential finance minister. Colbert is best known now for his efforts in restoring the French economy and fostering the development of its industry, but what most interests Soll and scholars of early modern intellectual history is Colbert's ascension, in 1653, to become head of the French Royal Library, the state's legal archives. It was the first time a non-scholar had ever taken control of the Library, and Colbert quickly set about transforming it, adding to its collection of books and manuscripts the administrative paperwork traditionally stored in the charterhouse, thereby creating an Enlightened encyclopedic database for law, diplomacy, political economy, and industrial policy. Having replaced the Library's former staff of legal scholars with bureaucratic information agents, Colbert succeeded in creating a secret repository for governing and managing all affairs of the estate.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert saw governance of the state not as the inherent ability of the king, but as a form of mechanical mastery of subjects such as medieval legal history, physics, navigation, architecture, and the price lists of nails, sails and gunpowder, and with his actions at the French Royal Library, he managed to create a revolution in the content of civic learning. In The Information Master, Jacob Soll explores the importance of Colbert's accomplishments, showing how the legacy of Colbert's encyclopedic tradition lies at the very center of the rise of the modern state.

Jacob Soll is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author of Publishing the Prince: Reading and the Birth of Political Criticism, 1513-1789. Soll edited a special issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas on "The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe." Soll is editor, along with Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair, of the series Knowledge, Culture, and Power in the Early Modern World.

May 2009
192 pages

Terror in Michigan: The Forgotten Story of America's Deadliest Act of School Violence

Arnie Bernstein

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Terror in Michigan: The Forgotten Story of America's Deadliest Act of School Violence takes readers back to 1927, when a madman forever changed a small Michigan town. On May 18, in a horrific conflagration of dynamite and blood, Andrew Kehoe set of a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school, killing thirty-eight children and six adults. Among the dead was Kehoe, who literally blew himself to bits by setting off a concealed dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, the remains of his wife—burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze—was found tied to a hand card, her skull crushed and objects placed with ritualistic simplicity next to her body. Although it was covered by media of the day, the Bath Consolidated School explosion was old news just three days later, when Charles Lindbergh took to the skies in his solo flight from New York to Paris.

With the horror of Oklahoma City and 9/11 still fresh in mind, the seemingly endless stories of school violence epitomized by the Columbine shooting, and suicide bombers around the globe, Terror in Michigan resonates powerfully for modern readers. Bolstered by cooperation with survivors and their descendents, the book includes exclusive interviews with people who lived through the horror of that day. This story of America's first mass murder has the striking immediacy of today's headlines.

Terror in Michigan is a gripping account of how Kehoe killed so many, the search and rescue efforts, and the long healing process for survivors and the town itself.

Arnie Bernstein has an undraduate degree in Film Studies from Southern Illinois University and a graduate degree in Creative Writing from Columbia College-Chicago. He is a board member of the society of Midland Authors, and serves as a judge during their annual literary competition. He has received a writing grant from the Puffin Foundation, been honored at the Illinois State Library Literary Festival, and was selected to participate in the prestigious Warner Brothers Comedy Writing workshop. His previous books include The Movies Are: Carl Sandburg's Film Reviews and essays, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies, and The Hoofs and Guns of the Storm: Chicago's Civil War Connections.

Fall 2008