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Vol. LXI, No. 49
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Wednesday, December 5, 2007
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Vol. LXI, No. 49
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Wednesday, December 5, 2007
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Labyrinth Books will host a reception and booksigning featuring local authors next Tuesday, December 11, at 5:30 p.m.
The public reception celebrates books published this year by members of the Princeton Research Forum (PRF), an organization of independent scholars living and working in the area.
“We are very glad that we are able to acknowledge the work of our members and welcome Labyrinth to Princeton at the same time,” said PRF President Mary Beth Lewis. “It’s been a banner year for our authors.”
Six books by seven of the group’s authors were published in 2007: Shelley Frisch’s translation into English of the German language Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe; Deconstructing Legitimacy: Viceroys, Merchants, and the Military in Late Colonial Peru by Patricia H. Marks; Furniture Restoration: Step-by-Step Tips and Techniques for Professional Results by husband and wife team Ina Brosseau Marx and Allen Marx; Ann Lee Morgan’s The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists; Hecatombe, a limited edition art book by Maria G. Pisano; and Letitia W. Ufford’s The Pasha: How Mehmet Ali Defied the West.
To mark the bumper crop, PRF board member Shelley Frisch contacted Labyrinth’s Dorothea von Moltke with the idea of a book party there.
“I was thrilled when Shelley contacted me even before we opened our doors,” said Ms. Moltke. “To me, the approach signaled an understanding by the community that Labyrinth will be a center for book discussions, signings, and events by community as well as university groups. The store will gain life insofar as the community gives it life.”
Meet the Authors
Besides her translation of Jürgen Neffe’s Einstein biography, which The Washington Post listed as of the “best books of 2007,” Ms. Frisch is celebrating the publication of her latest translation, The Secret Pulse of Time by Stefan Klein. She is currently working on a biography of Erika Mann. The Princeton University graduate is set to receive the Modern Language Association of America’s seventh Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature later this month for her translation of Reiner Stach’s Kafka: The Decisive Years, published by Harcourt.
Princeton resident Patricia Marks became interested in Latin American history after spending years living in Puerto Rico, Bolivia, and Peru with her husband Russell Marks, a 1954 graduate of Princeton University. She was one of the first women admitted to the Princeton University history department’s Ph.D. program. While working toward her doctorate, which she received in 2003, she edited scholarly publications for the Princeton University Library. Her doctoral dissertation formed the foundation for her book Deconstructing Legitimacy: Viceroys, Merchants, and the Military in Late Colonial Peru.
For three decades, the husband and wife team Ina Brosseau Marx and Allen Marx have been professional restorers of gilded furniture dating back to the 17th-century as well as lacquer objects from Asia. Their work is included in such major collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Art Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design. The Princeton couple, who also teach and lecture internationally, are currently preparing a dictionary of gilding arts terms, for which they have already gathered over two thousand in eight languages.
Princeton resident and art historian Ann Lee Morgan’s passion is American art, particularly 20th-century painting. A past president of PRF, she has been an independent scholar since 1990. Her publications include a monograph on the 20th-century modernist Arthur Dove, as well as an edition of letters the artist exchanged with photographer and gallery director Alfred Stieglitz, who supported Dove’s work for many years. Ms. Morgan is currently preparing a proposal for a volume on American women artists.
Ms. Pisano created her limited edition artist’s book Hecatombe, which will be on display during the booksigning, in response to the events of 9/11. “This is an attempt to come to terms with an experience that is a constant open wound for the nation,” said the artist. “The memorial book incorporates all the victims’ names along with photographs of destroyed buildings and impromptu memorials.” The book’s physical design is symbolic of the two towers with photographs by the artist arranged in an accordian structure.
The Plainsboro resident publishes books and prints under her own Memory Press imprint and has over 20 artist’s books to her credit. She has been celebrated in Making Memory Books by Hand by Kristina Feliciano and her work is in the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the American Art Museum, MOMA, and the Princeton University art museum. She teaches all aspects of the book arts, papermaking, printing, bookbinding, and conservation in university settings as well as in her own studio. She manages the preservation, treatment, and storage of the fine print collection of the Newark Public Library.
Letitia Ufford’s The Pasha: How Mehemet Ali Defied the West, 1839-1841, was inspired by the first Gulf War, and is the result of the author’s research in Lebanon, Turkey, and the Bosphorus region. After graduating from Princeton High School — the Mercer Street resident grew up in Princeton where her father, the theoretical physicist John Wheeler, taught at the University — Ms. Ufford was one of the first undergraduates to study Arabic at Radcliffe College. A specialist in Middle Eastern and European history, she is a founder of the Princeton Middle East Society and has been a member of the Princeton Research Forum since it began 27 years ago.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (609) 497.3919, or email: info-pr@labyrinthbooks.com. For more information about PRF, visit: www.princetonresearchforum.org.