Official biographies of the “Mercury Seven,” Gordon Cooper, Malcolm S. Carpenter, John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr., and Donald K. Slayton.

Best known for his seminal Birds of America, Audubon’s prints are among the world’s most recognized images.

Excerpts

““I think what you have to say about Reinecke is certainly true and I doubt whether his conceit and egotism can ever be curbed. Certainly he is a liability in a large office. I shall await the report of Clegg… but have no doubt but that it will be necessary for me to make a change.”

“I shall look forward with considerable interest to your report upon the Pittsburgh office and as soon as you have finished that I am planning to have you move on. I realize that the New York office may be in somewhat of a hectic situation at the present time, in view of the Lindbergh case which is taking the time of so many Agents of that office, but you may be able to get a slant on how things are running there.”

Medical researchers wanted to gather “aeromedical” data and test effects on the Project Mercury astronaut’s body of “significant and unusual stresses of manned capsule flight.” The stresses they were looking into included weightlessness, acceleration tolerance, radiation, noise vibration, thermal stresses, and hypobaric and environmental control system effects. At the time, some scientists believed that weightlessness could lead to circulatory failure, disorientation, gastrointestinal and urinary disturbances, and lack of muscular coordination. The key conclusion of Project Mercury’s biomedical program was that human beings could function in the space environment for incrementally increasing flight durations of more than one day.

“I was reading some of Mr [Theodore] Parker’s writings by the bye the other day, and was very much struck with their earnestness. I was surprised too to find how much of the pure ore is contained in them…

“A few years, and these new States will be granaries for those on the Sea board…. I had occasion a short time since to go to Geneva [Ill.]… and the whole country was like a garden... with your love for natural beauty, you would enjoy such a sight right well.”

John Dodge writes to his first cousin Samuel Johnson, attending Harvard Divinity School, about family genealogy and goes on to discuss the remarkable growth of Chicago. Dodge served as the first secretary of the Chicago board of trade from 1849 to 1853, and in the 1850s directed the land department of the Illinois Central Railroad. Johnson, the recipient, eventually wrote three books on comparative religion that treated Eastern religions as equal with Christianity. His lecture on Theodore Parker was published posthumously as a book in 1890.

“I must venture this...to express our most sincere affliction, at the melancholy news of your m^r hamilton’s end. … our credit is not great, with m^r Tal…[Tallyrand] who visited you at Albany, and is now, on the very top of the wheel of fortune, w[h]ere he has taken care not to be another time reduced to be pennyless… Pray, let me hear, once more from you, and all your family. I have not had a word from any of you since I left new York…”

Two tickets to the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia. One admitted a pupil of the public schools of Philadelphia and was used on Saturday, June 11, according to the stamp on the verso. The other is an apparently unused “Season Ticket” that admitted the bearer “To All Parts of the Fair,” except the Children’s Exhibitions but was “Forfeited if Transferred and Not Good unless Endorsed.” The verso includes the oath, “I hereby promise that this Ticket shall be used to obtain admission to the Fair by myself only” and a blank line for a signature.

Picasso donated a pen and ink “machines of war” drawing that served as the basis of this print to use in promoting the anti-war march planned for November 13-15, 1969. 250,000 or more people attended the march.

This fascinating letter by freshman Congressman and future president Gerald R. Ford to a Catholic college president in Michigan defends his early record on civil rights legislation.

“Personally, I have lived by and believe in the fundamental principle of equality of opportunity regardless of race, color or creed. I am in favor of such a policy for all citizens and will cooperate to accomplish that objective by the most practical and effective methods.”

In a letter home to his parents in northern New Jersey, John Brown describes his plans to join a group of men trapping furs in the Rocky Mountains. If that plan does not work, he and others will trap in the Winnebago Swamps of northern Illinois and southern Michigan Territory (Wisconsin). At the time he wrote this letter, Brown was helping to build the two-story Peoria County Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois.

Relates a conversation with Peter Rothermel on the need to nurture an “American School of Design,” with sharp criticisms of the deleterious effects of European study on budding talent as seen in Emanuel Leutze’s latest work.

“[Rothermel] during the evening suggested one thing as tending peculiarly to build up an American School of Design without the extraneous influences that all young men going abroad are subject too. it was that an embargo to prevent the leaving of artists for abroad, for a space of 50 years, be put in operation, thus causing their productions to be pure emanations of their own early & intuitive feeling…”