Glendale History: March Madness, 1909 Style

(click on the photograph to view a larger version in a new window)

With men's and women's NCAA Tournaments beginning this week, it seems apropos to share this picture of the 1909 Glendale High School girls basketball team. (Unfortunately, no information on how far they advanced in their bracket is provided on the back of the photo.)

This photograph is one of the thousands available to library patrons and researchers at the Special Collections Room in the Glendale Central Library.

The Special Collections Room also contains news clippings, books, maps, and other materials that cover the history of Glendale, neighboring cities, and California in general. The collection is particularly useful for local history and genealogy research projects. Special Collections also houses the Cat Collection, one of the largest collections of feline-related materials in the world.

The Special Collections Room is currently open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m and 1 to 3 p.m. and by appointment. Please call (818) 548-2037 for additional information.

New History Books at the Library!

Here are some new books hitting the shelves soon at GPL:


Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades
by Phillips, Jonathan

A fresh, no-nonsense take on the causes, human cost and continued relevance of the medieval Crusades. A straightforward, pertinent study replete with passionate personages both Christian and Muslim. (Kirkus)







Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town
by de Bellaigue, Christopher

A brave investigation into the buried history of Armenian massacre and Kurdish violence in a small Turkish village. Conversant in Turkish and charmed by the cosmopolitan nature of the people, foreign correspondent de Bellaigue was posted to Istanbul for some years before he began to question the official Turkish story that the forced deportation and massacre of Armenians during World War I had been provoked by their rebelliousness and collusion with Russia. (Kirkus)



Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s: The Golden Days of Paranoia
by Wheen, Francis

The meat of Wheen's lucid discussion is what can be considered a golden age of the paranoid style of politics, as the historian Richard Hofstadter put it, and of widespread paranoia in general. Literate, authentic to period detail and often entertaining . . . (Kirkus)

New Books at the Library!

Here are some of the books that are coming soon to GPL:

Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century
by Grayling, A. C.

Grayling, a well-known British philosopher, has attempted a task worthy of Voltaire and Pierre Bayle. He has given us a philosophical dictionary of important ideas. All readers interested in the issues discussed (and who isn't?) will gain much from this book. (LJ)






See What I'm Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses
by Rosenblum, Lawrence D.

An eye-opening look at the mechanics of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Rosenblum's enthusiasm is contagious and his prose accessible, and he is mostly successful in explaining massive amounts of information about sensory abilities we take for granted. (Kirkus)






The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong
by Shenk, David

Journalist Shenk, who has a flair for explaining scientific subjects in everyday language, challenges the simple notion that genes determine whether or not a person is gifted. [H]ighly readable. Upbeat and entertaining. (Kirkus)