Waving Not Drowning: Rare Books in a Digital Age

Abstract

Had I titled this paper a few days after I committed to the one above, I might have taken the title from a review in the Time Literary Supplement of a recent book about Joseph Kennedy, the ruthless tycoon who fathered John, Bobby, and Teddy.² The first sentences of the review read: “On the golf-course one day, Joseph P. Kennedy showed his teeth to another player who waved at him across the green. ‘You know,’ he remarked to his partner, ‘that guy thinks I’m smiling.’” Sharks seem to look that way, too; which fits, in its own way, with my . . .