Human beings have been burying and caring for the dead for over thirty thousand years, notes historian Leor Halevi. This activity, he explains, is one that differentiates human beings from animals and has allowed religious communities and cultures to create unique identities. In the seventh through ninth centuries, Muslims in cities throughout Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the eastern Mediterranean sought to create lasting patterns to respond to death in ways that reflected their emerging religion.

How and why Islam developed culturally distinctive rituals surrounding death is the central question of Halevi’s Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (Columbia University Press, 2007). As the first social history of death rituals in the early Islamic period, the book explores how Muslims in different regions negotiated what it meant to live—and die—as a Muslim.

Key to this process was the Ahl al–‘ilm, or “people of knowledge,” a diverse group of pietists and ideologues, mostly men but some women, revered in their respective communities as possessing religious knowledge. These traditionists and jurists memorized and analyzed oral traditions (Hạdīth) about the Prophet Muhammad and his companions to construct ideals of the proper Islamic Funeral. Each Hạdīth contained a report of an ancient event with a saying of Muhammad (matn), and a chain of authorities that gave credibility to the oral tradition as it moved through generations (isnad), explains Halevi. The Ahl al-‘ilm used these traditions, later compiled into written collections, to formulate Fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence.

Sometimes, there were competing Hạdīths, explains Halevi. For instance, early accounts of the funeral preparations for the Prophet’s daughter Fāṭima differed: some claimed that her husband was absent during the ritual washing of Fāṭima’s body, while others insisted that he performed it himself. Instead of attempting to tease out which account was more true, Halevi examines how different pietists in different regions worked with these memories to advance “ideological agendas.”

The debates around these various traditions shaped real-world practices, says Halevi. In developing a new religion and its accompanying rituals, pietists saw an opportunity to create a new social order. Rituals expressed faith but also could create and distinguish boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women, and religious elites and laypeople. Pietists emphasized oral traditions to enact a vision of society and hierarchy in which religious experts and patriarchs could enforce their will on those they viewed as outside of proper Islamic tradition.

For example, in early Islam, women had dominated mourning practices, expressing their grief through wailing (niyāḥa), a dramatic form of grief in which they would scream an oral lament accompanied by physical expressions like tearing their hair or drawing their blood. Many pietists despised these displays of emotion, interpreting them as remnants of pre-Islamic, barbaric customs (Jāhilī). Wailing went against their ideal of Muslim funerals marked by haste, contemplative silence, restraint, and austerity.

Responses against wailing and other emotional expressions varied across time and in different regions. One of the strongest reactions, says Halevi, was in the city of Kūfa, Iraq. Oral traditions in Kūfa had focused on a story in which the Prophet Muhammad forbade women from accompanying burials. Masruq, a prominent pietist who lived in the 7^th century (d. 682), celebrated this particular story. To promote his point of view, he took to throwing dust in the faces of women who tried to participate in burial ceremonies. Others, such as Malik, Medina’s most prominent jurist (d. 795), did not object to women’s participation in burial ceremonies, yet discouraged the practice of wailing.

These kinds of variations reveal that early transmitters of Islamic traditions were not merely preserving neutral memories of the Prophet but actively shaping collective memory and social norms, says Halevi. Once codified in legal texts, these traditions gained authority and sometimes were strictly enforced, for example, as in Kūfa by the official enforcer of public morals (muḥtasib). Halevi suggests that perhaps one reason religious leaders in Kūfa were so concerned about wailing practices was Kufa’s unique geography. Each tribal quarter of the city had its own cemetery (jabbāna), and these sometimes served as gathering spaces for rebels to plan revolts against the Umayyad caliphate, a monarchical government. In this context, wailing women might have been seen as inciting rebellion to avenge the death of those they were mourning.

Islamization was neither uniform nor simply a top-down process, according to Halevi. While religious elites shaped discourse and laws, the everyday practices and labor of ordinary people, such as “impoverished widows, wailers for the dead, shroud weavers, gravediggers, and corpsewashers,” contributed to the creation of early Islamic rituals and society, if in less obvious ways. Guidelines issued by pietists were not always followed, and sometimes practices emerged naturally. These tensions between guidelines and practice are revealed through the wide variety of sources Halevi examines: sociological reports, theological tracts, legal sources, early Arabic poems of lament, obituaries of famous men and women, and material culture.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, reports Halevi, tombstones gained popularity and became increasingly standardized and distinctively Islamic. The earliest monuments from the 650s had no “distinctly Islamic signs.” But beginning in the late eighth century, a limited number of Qur’ānic verses and phrases from oral traditions such as “fill his grave with light” became increasingly popular across the Islamic world on epitaphs. This rapid standardization could be seen as Islamization, but Halevi highlights widespread opposition to tombstones, which some religious leaders referred to as “contemptible innovations.” These leaders feared that tomb markers could encourage grave visitation and the veneration of the dead, and could create distinctions between rich and poor.

Halevi’s research shows how rituals had the power to transform social and religious life. While his study is focused on history, he also highlights how today’s rich and diverse Islamic practices and beliefs are rooted in classical sources and early practices.

Halevi was a Kluge Fellow in International Studies through a partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies in 2003. At the Library, his research for the book drew from the Arabic materials in the Law Library and in the African and Middle Eastern Division. Muhammad’s Grave won the 2006 Albert Hourani Book Award; the 2008 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion; the 2008 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award; was shortlisted for the 2008 Best First Book award in the history of religions; and longlisted for the 2008 Cundill International Prize.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

At the end of the Cold War, there was strong hope for the global spread of liberal democracy and market economies. The fall of the Berlin Wall seemingly promised an open society and a brighter, more democratic future. However, those who celebrated the integration of Eastern and Western countries soon realized that this transition would not be easy. In The Light that Failed: Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy (Pegasus Books, 2019), Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the belief that the end of the Cold War began an Age of Liberalism and Democracy was an “illusion.” They contend that, paradoxically, liberalism became the “victim of this heralded success in the Cold War.”

Instead of an age of liberalism and democracy, there was, in Krastev and Holmes’s terms, a thirty-year “Age of Imitation.” In the wake of the Cold War, there was no rival to Western liberalism. In this unipolar system, the authors argue, former communist countries believed that imitating the West would be the most effective way to democratize. Eastern and Central Europeans wanted to have a “normal” life, they explain, which involved not only imitating government institutions, but also adopting Western norms and lifestyles.

Over time, imitation bred resentment. Krastev and Holmes explain that imitation is inherently an asymmetrical relationship, requiring the acknowledgment of the imitator’s moral inferiority. The democratization process was often perceived as rigid, rather than flexible to unique local conditions and accepting of national traditions. As countries turned away from their traditional aspects to adopt “superior” or “normal” Western values, customs, and institutions, it was natural for feelings of humiliation, irritation, and imposter syndrome to arise. The rhetoric of antiliberals and populists in countries like Hungary and Poland capitalized on these sentiments.

For example, Mária Schmidt, one of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s key intellectual advisers, voiced this type of counter-push when she claimed: “We don’t want to copy what the Germans are doing or what the French are doing, …we want to continue with our way of life.”

The dynamic that took shape also included the idea that the West was entitled to monitor the “progress” of the post-communist states. In many cases, policymakers from Western Europe and the United States frustrated local leaders by pressuring them to enact policies they were not partial to. Even worse, some Westerners disparaged them as “going through the motions of democracy,” even though that’s precisely what they were being pushed to do.

Freedom of movement also created new strains. Millions of young, educated Eastern and Central Europeans left their home countries after the Cold War, draining human capital and weakening liberal political forces. Populist leaders seized on this demographic loss, pointing to open borders as a primary culprit.

Several events, including the global financial crisis in 2008 and the 2015 migration crisis in Europe, made Eastern and Central European leaders question whether Western liberalism was really worth emulating. Perceptions of hypocrisy exposed the fragility of the newly established liberal order. So too did Russia’s strategy of “mirroring,” as Krastev and Holmes define it. In this parody of the more straightforward kinds of imitation encouraged by the West, Russia developed a strategy of selecting some of the most problematic behavioral patterns of US foreign policy with the intent of holding a mirror up to the West, to reveal some of the West’s defects and to undermine the idea of any Western moral superiority. For example, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin justified its actions by pointing to human rights ideals, even directly quoting a paragraph from a NATO statement. In reality, argue Krastev and Holmes, Russia, rather than caring about human rights, was cynically suggesting that the US, too, uses the pretext of values and norms as a veil for advancing its geopolitical interests.

In this landscape, liberalism began to lose its ability to self-correct. Without a competing ideology, it ceased to question itself. It also no longer had the strength of comparison.

The end of the Age of Imitation, claim Krastev and Holmes, is marked by China’s rise in global power. But this doesn’t mean there is a new type of Cold War in which China and the United States are competing with proselytizing ideologies. Rather, they explain, international competition is becoming less ideological and more about becoming dominant and powerful without creating converts.

The book’s title is a nod to Rudyard Kipling’s first novel, The Light That Failed, which was published in two versions: one short and optimistic, the other long and tragic. Similarly, Krastev and Holmes suggest that the “Age of Imitation” can end either in despair or renewal. They argue that the end of liberalism’s dominant global world order should not be mourned but celebrated. In a world of diverse political models, they suggest, liberalism has the opportunity to thrive and flourish once again.

Ivan Krastev was the Kissinger Chair at the Kluge Center in 2018-2019, a position which he said was “critical for finishing the book.” The Light that Failed has been translated into 20 languages. It won the 30^th Annual Lionel Gelber Prize for the best English-language book on International Affairs.

You can read more about Ivan Krastev’s work in this blog or listen to him directly here.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

Major Robert Odell Owens (1936-2013) was an American politician, civil rights activist, and the only professional librarian elected to the House of Representatives. He served as a New York State Senator from 1975 to 1982 and as a Representative for the 11^th and later 12^th Congressional Districts of New York State from 1982 to 2006. Owens championed education and libraries and was instrumental in helping pass the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act through the House of Representatives. He also served as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) for over a decade.

In 2006, Owens retired from Congress, expressing a desire to write novels and plays. Shortly after, then-Librarian of Congress James H. Billington named Owens a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center, where he wrote The Peacock Elite: A Case Study of the Congressional Black Caucus (GrantHouse Publishers, 2011). Drawing on his many years of membership, Owens offered a rare insider’s account of the CBC’s structure, accomplishments, shortcomings, and potential.

Founded in 1971 by the thirteen Black members of the 92^nd Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus’s original mission was to ensure Black and marginalized Americans could achieve the American Dream. The group’s formation was a major milestone for Black members of Congress. Owens recalls that the first Black man elected to Congress, John W. Menard, was denied his seat despite winning by a large majority in 1869. Segregation barred Congressman Adam Clayton Powell from eating in the House of Representatives Dining Room until after 1965. The first Black woman representative, and founding member of the CBC, Shirley Chisholm, did not take office until 53 years after the first white woman representative. Today, Black members of Congress still face challenges, but they also wield significant influence, power, and visibility, much of it derived from the collective efforts of the CBC, Owens argues.

The title of Owens’ book is a reference to some of the dynamics and characters seen in the Caucus. “Peacocks,” as he describes them, are members adept at gaining the spotlight and attention. In contrast, he also describes “workhorses,” that is, those who quietly and tirelessly work without seeking recognition. Owens appreciates a balance between both styles, noting that good ideas and a moral agenda are important, as is the ability “to strut across the public stage.” One style without the other cannot be successful. However, he warns that unchecked “peacock” characteristics can devolve into destructive self-promotion.

Owens analyzes how the CBC’s performance from 1983 to 2006 aligned with its founding mission. Owens’ greatest disappointment was that the CBC had not articulated a clear agenda and long-term plan. Too often, the CBC responded reactively to crises or advanced piecemeal legislation, he says, rather than pursuing a coordinated strategy for systemic change. This led to some blunders, such as what he viewed as inadequate responses to Hurricane Katrina, which disproportionately affected poor African Americans. He urges the CBC to develop a plan that focuses on economic opportunity, education, and health policy and to play a more active role in organizing Black communities beyond the legislative sphere.

Still, Owens recognizes the CBC’s many achievements. He highlights, for example, the Caucus’s influence in supporting the restoration of democracy in Haiti. CBC members, he recounts, were among those who persuaded President Clinton to provide a military escort to President Aristide, who had been ousted and exiled by a coup, allowing him to return to his role in 1994.

Owens completed the manuscript in 2007, and it was published in 2011. In his foreword, written after the 2008 election of Barack Obama, Owens celebrates the historic moment while stressing that the CBC’s mission remains vital. As he noted in his prologue, even as representation in government has increased, the “misery index,” the measurement of unemployment, health, housing, education, incarceration, and poverty among Black Americans, has not declined. Owens, who passed away in 2013, viewed the CBC as an essential organization and was hopeful that it could advance civil rights and improve the lives of everyday Black Americans.

Owens wrote The Peacock Elite during his time at the Library of Congress in 2007. While in residence, he organized a panel discussion including elected representatives, political scientists, and several ambassadors.

You can watch Owens’ panel here or read more about his work here.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

The 24th edition of All-Star Comics hit global newsstands, drug stores, and military bases in 1945. Titled “This Is Our Enemy,” the comic featured the Justice Society of America, including the Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. On the cover image, these superheroes watch in distress as the four horsemen of the apocalypse destroy a city while flying the Nazi flag. Beyond the cover, the text of the comic spends a full forty pages condemning Nazism and German culture.

This comic was more than an organic reflection of its historical context. It developed from the strategic collaboration between the Writers’ War Board (WWB), a quasi-governmental organization, and the comic book publisher. As historian Paul Hirsch explores in his book Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism (University of Chicago, 2021), this was part of a broader, secret initiative by the United States government to use comic books as propaganda during World War II and later during the Cold War.

Why comics? Hirsch identifies four main reasons. First, they were immensely popular. By 1955, comic book publishers collectively sold hundreds of millions of comic books each year globally across races, genders, and socio-economic classes. Secondly, a large portion of this readership was adults, including members of the armed forces. The War Advertising Council (WAC) hoped that comic books could both educate and entertain servicemen, half of whom regularly read comic books. Third, the simple visuals and text gave comic books the appearance of being accessible to everyone. Finally, the poor reputation of comic books worked in the government’s favor.

Often maligned as “trash” or “lowbrow,” comic books were written and illustrated by marginalized groups like women, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish Americans who were barred from other jobs. With virtually no censorship or regulation, comics contained explicit language, references to drug use, nudity, racism, and graphic violence that were not typically seen in other media at that time. This perceived low status provided the perfect disguise for propaganda. The government, argues Hirsch, could promote aggressive storylines while hiding its influence from an American public that viewed government propaganda as a symptom of totalitarianism.

In the United States, comic book publishers willingly worked with the WWB to shape storylines and characters with the goal of hardening public opinion toward “America’s enemies.” The WWB pushed publishers to equate Nazis and Germans, encouraging racial and ethnic hatred abroad to justify total war. Paradoxically, at home, they commissioned comics promoting racial tolerance in an effort to encourage unity behind the war effort.

The government also produced its own comic books. The army and navy partnered with publishers starting in 1943, with the goal of boosting enrollment. The Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), which was first part of the Executive Office of the President and later transferred to the US Department of State, shipped millions of comic books throughout Latin America to rally opposition to fascism and totalitarianism. In this case, the government produced its own comics and did not attempt to hide the propaganda. They condescendingly assumed that Latin American readers would be uneducated and not shrewd enough to be wary of American propaganda, says Hirsch.

After WWII, comics filled with sexual themes, violence, racism, and crime flooded the market, explains Hirsch. This imagery clashed with Cold War diplomacy. Policymakers feared that the representations of white Americans as greedy, violent, and racist would harm the economic and diplomatic aims of the United States. How could the United States argue moral superiority relative to the Soviet Union when popular depictions of the country in comics like Shock SuspenStories, Crimes by Women, and Web of Evil were so vulgar? On the other hand, anti-racist comics also raised concerns because government officials feared they could disillusion US servicemen asked to defend a racist society.

A psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham, was among those who questioned the content and role of comic books in the US. The anti-comic book campaign he started resulted in a public investigation by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954. In response, the comic book industry voluntarily funded the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA), an organization that reviewed and approved comic books of major distributors. The CMAA Comics Code Authority took effect that same year. The code banned dark humor, violence, nudity, mentions of drug use, horror, and monsters. Hirsch highlights that many modern superheroes like Marvel’s Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, and Thor were created in this more constrained environment. While they remained patriotic in tone, these later comic book characters were not directly influenced by government authorities.

Through carefully curated evidence, Hirsch shows how the United States government used media embedded in popular culture to support its public diplomacy efforts during WWII and the Cold War. The ghosts of this major effort still reverberate today in the midst of the massively successful superhero franchise.

According to Hirsch, this comic book imperialism never fully ended. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he notes, was still commissioning comic books as late as the 1980s.

Hirsch spent time in residence at the Library of Congress as a Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon Fellow in 2015. During this time, he drew from thousands of original comic books not available anywhere else, as well as from the papers of Fredric Wertham and the papers of the Writers’ War Board. The Library holds the largest publicly available comic book collection in the world.

Hirsch’s book received the 2022 Ray and Pat Browne Award from the Popular Culture Association.

You can read more about Hirsch’s work here and learn more about the Library’s comic book collection here:

How the Government Connects through Pop Culture: From Comics to Memes

Let’s Talk Comics: War and Military

Let’s Talk Comics: Crime

Celebrating Comics’ Champion Stan Lee 

Related Links:

The Senate Comic Book Hearings of 1954 

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

This post is part of the Kluge Center’s 25 for 25, in honor of the Kluge Center’s 25^th anniversary, celebrating 25 books that were written thanks to the Kluge Center’s support. Read the introductory post to the series here.

In 2020, the United States government attempted to force TikTok, the popular social media app owned by Beijing-based Bytedance, to divest its US operations. The Chinese government, in turn, halted divestment negotiations because it considers data a national asset and views the export of algorithms as a potential national security threat. Since then, shifting bans have targeted TikTok, with another pending since January 2025. Why is the US government concerned about a social media app, and why does China treat it as a national resource?

The TikTok dispute reflects a larger battle over digital sovereignty between the United States and China. In her book, Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, 2022), Aynne Kokas, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, introduces her readers to the increasingly pressing issue of data trafficking, her term for the illicit movement of data through commercial platforms for national political gain. She also outlines what is at stake, identifies dangers, and suggests strategies to mitigate the risks posed by this threat.

Data sovereignty is a country’s “control over its national digital infrastructures, technologies, and data,” writes Kokas, and the movement of data from tech firms in the United States to China threatens digital sovereignty not only in the US but around the globe, she explains.

Data trafficking poses many risks. A class-action lawsuit in California alleged that TikTok sent identifiable biometric data to third parties. This type of data could be used to create AI deepfakes and facilitate the spread of misinformation. Ultimately, TikTok settled for $92 million.

In another case, in 2020, the United States forced the LGBTQ+ community social media app Grindr to transfer ownership from the Beijing company Kunlun to the California-based San Vicente Acquisition Partners. The government was concerned that sensitive data, such as HIV status, sexual orientation, personal chats, and photographs, could be trafficked. This data could also have been used to blackmail government or military personnel who shared personal information on the site.

Some platforms have also censored materials based on pressure from China. For example, Kokas recounts that Zoom, a US-based company, terminated the accounts of US and China-based activists who hosted an online event commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre. When the US government investigated these actions, Zoom claimed it was following Chinese law. This incident, argues Kokas, shows that in the face of competing pressures, companies tend to follow the Chinese government’s strict data oversight regulations rather than US law, which are perceived as being less consistently enforced.

While most users may not be concerned about their data being trafficked to China, Kokas shows that the stakes go far beyond personal risk. If large amounts of a nation’s data are captured, she suggests, it can help a potential adversary identify political beliefs, health risks, and economic vulnerabilities. Security risks become even more pronounced when a foreign nation, like China, is also supplying critical infrastructure in communications, health, or agriculture, and could revoke access to that infrastructure at any time.

According to Kokas, China currently holds the upper hand. In the US, she notes, regulators have prioritized growth, enabling “surveillance capitalism,” which allows private entities to analyze online behavior in order to monetize data. In that environment, the growth of the tech sector has been prioritized over consumer protections.

Piecemeal legislation leaves American consumers exposed to both domestic and transnational threats. China, in contrast, strictly regulates tech firms and treats data as a strategic asset, banning US platforms like Facebook and Twitter while gathering massive data sets from American users of Chinese platforms. This puts the US at a disadvantage   since large data sets are a key requirement for developing technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Both countries share responsibility for the current state of affairs, according to Kokas. Both exploit consumer data, and the economic ties between the US and China further entrench vulnerabilities in areas ranging from social media to agriculture to space exploration. For example, Chinese access to crop data could allow foreign disruption of US farming infrastructure.

To manage data trafficking threats, Kokas advocates for a “nuanced, multipronged approach that acknowledges political, corporate, and even individual resistance to change.” Drawing inspiration from Stephen Pacala and Robert H. Socolow’s concept of “stabilization wedges,” which are incremental approaches for managing climate change, Kokas suggests implementing similar kinds of adjustments to regulate data flows, for example, via   corporate governance and financial market mechanisms. She refers to this set of potential adjustments as “data flow stabilization wedges.” This concept highlights a comparable challenge between climate change and data trafficking: the tension between short-term benefits for consumers and corporations and long-term interests. In both cases, inaction is justified by arguing that large changes require more research, could harm the economy, or could be resolved by future generations. However, unified action focused on incremental solutions, contends Kokas, could make data movement more “predictable and manageable,” especially when sweeping changes are not immediately feasible.

She also calls for action from corporations, governments, and consumers. Most consumers, she suggests, currently cannot consent to the system because they don’t understand it.  Consumer education could generate the necessary public buy-in to galvanize efforts to protect data.

Ultimately, institutional interventions must set boundaries on the exchange and sale of consumer, commercial, and government data, contends Kokas. The federal government in the US, she suggests, must work with other democracies to create new operational standards and secure data sovereignty. But this will be difficult, given competing economic and international interests. In the meantime, incentivizing corporations to prioritize data security and informing the public could be useful steps.

Kokas worked on Trafficking Data as a Kluge Fellow in 2019. On July 11, 2023, she was asked to testify before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China to discuss some of the issues she addressed in her book. Trafficking Data won the Bronze Award from the Axiom Business Book Awards, was a Gold Medalist in the 2023 IPPY Awards, and was a finalist for the 2023 Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism and Mass Communication Research Award.

You can hear Kokas discuss her research here.

You can read more about Kokas’s research at these blogs:

Data and Surveillance in China and the United States

How Distance Learning Could Put Chinese Students at US Universities at Risk

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

This post is part of the Kluge Center’s 25 for 25, in honor of the Kluge Center’s 25^th anniversary, celebrating 25 books that were written thanks to the Kluge Center’s support. Read the introductory post to the series here. 

In an 1899 address, Ainsworth Rand Spofford, the sixth Librarian of Congress, described the Library of Congress as “our great national conservatory of books in which the works of all of you will be welcomed and forever preserved.” This quote underscores the Library’s leading role in shaping the nation’s intellectual life—a theme that Jane Aikin explores in her book The Library of Congress: From Jefferson’s Vision to the Digital Age (Georgetown University Press, 2025).

The book traces the origins of the Library of Congress back to 1800, when President John Adams officially established the institution. Members of Congress needed books, especially law books, to inform their policymaking, but Washington, DC, had no libraries at the time. The Library’s original law-focused collections consisted of only 740 books and 3 maps that were considered useful for legislators. Back then, the compact collection was housed in the Capitol Building.

Just 12 years after its founding, a fire started by British forces—retaliation for the destruction of York (part of present-day Toronto) by American forces—destroyed the Capitol, and all the books inside. Thomas Jefferson, who was passionate about knowledge, had dedicated over 50 years to building a personal collection of more than 6,000 volumes in the fields of politics, science, law, fine arts, philosophy, and history. He offered to sell his own library to Congress to help reestablish the collections that had been ravaged by the fire.

Initially, some members of Congress objected to the purchase of Jefferson’s library because his books went beyond law and governance. Jefferson, however, famously made the case that “There is, in fact, no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.” Ever since then, this outlook has served as one of the guiding principles for the Library’s acquisitions.

In 1897, the Library of Congress relocated to the newly constructed building that would later be named the Jefferson Building, situated directly across from the Capitol. Modeled after the Paris Opera House in the Beaux Arts style, Aikin notes that the building boasted numerous technological innovations, including a pneumatic tube and conveyor system, which allowed books to reach the Capitol within 10 minutes.

In addition to recounting landmark historical events that shaped the Library, Aikin traces the Library’s evolution as Librarians of Congress with diverse backgrounds brought their own vision to the role.

Among them, Herbert Putnam, the eighth Librarian of Congress who served from 1899 to 1939, enhanced the Library’s capacity to provide reference and bibliographic assistance, which encouraged resource-sharing among national libraries. Additionally, in 1901, he inaugurated an interlibrary loan program, which has since expanded to serve academic institutions across the globe.

Herbert Putnam also played a crucial role—along with philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Music Division Chief Carl Engel—in establishing a Trust Fund Board in 1925 which, Aikin explains, created the legal provision for the Library, as a federal agency, to accept private funding for the development of collections and employment of subject matter specialists. The first gift was from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to build a chamber music hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building. Today, Aikin notes, the Trust Fund Board supplements appropriations, enabling the Library to host events like the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, National Book Festival, Live! At the Library, and concerts.

The Library’s concert series has presented world-class performances at no cost to the public since October 1925. Historical highlights of the concert series include commissioning Martha Graham and Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” in 1944, which received the Pulitzer Prize, nationwide radio broadcasts that connected the American people to the Library, and a distinguished resident quartet program that featured the Budapest String Quartet, performing with the Library’s Stradivari instruments for 22 years, and later the Juilliard String Quartet beginning in 1962. The Coolidge Auditorium hosts concerts from October to June each year and features chamber music, jazz, American music, and contemporary music. Attendees have an opportunity to view treasures from the Library’s performing arts collections related to each concert, making the experience truly unique. Major artists from Clint Black and Stevie Wonder to Carole King and Yo-Yo Ma have appeared at the Library.

While the Library has become a vital educational institution on both national and international levels, Aikin writes that the Library’s top priority remains serving Congress. To enhance information flow between experts and members of Congress, the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 renamed and expanded the Legislative Reference Service into the Congressional Research Service, which provides legal and policy analysis to both the House and the Senate. The research service employs experts in the fields of Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade; American Law; Domestic Social Policy; Government and Finance; and Resources, Science and Industry. To satisfy the demand for nuanced information about countries worldwide, Aikin notes, the Library also continues to collect and make available books and newspapers from across the globe. Since 1973, the Library has published Foreign Newspaper and Gazette Reports, delivering insights into legal developments in foreign nations.

Aikin explains that the establishment of the Copyright Act in 1870 elevated the Library’s role as a national library by requiring publishers to deposit two copies of their copyrighted works. This deposit mechanism enabled the Library to acquire the most comprehensive collection of published works in the nation, transforming it into an archive for US culture, knowledge, and creativity. Ainsworth Rand Spofford, who served as Librarian of Congress from 1864 to 1897, played an important role in this since he strongly advocated for consolidating all US copyright Services within the Library of Congress. Aikin quotes Spofford, who argued that the copyright deposits would form the “optimum base for an American national library” by giving the Library the right to the nation’s publishing output.

During her fellowship at the Kluge Center, Aikin drew on primary resources, including the Herbert Putnam Papers, the Annual Reports of the Librarians of Congress, and specialized secondary sources such as “Poetry and Poets Laureate,” by Prosser Gifford, which gives insight into the establishment of the office of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

At the end of the book, Aikin recounts the appointment of Dr. Carla Hayden, the first woman and first African American Librarian of Congress, who wrote the book’s foreword, expressing her recognition for the women and men who dedicated their careers to making knowledge and cultural heritage resources accessible throughout both times of peace and of social upheaval.

More information on the history of the library can be found here.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

You have probably heard the phrase “you are the master of your own destiny.” In contemporary society, we are encouraged from a young age to plan for the future, especially around finances. Hence, we purchase insurance policies, invest in diverse portfolios, build credit, and save for emergencies and retirement. Risk, both personal and institutional, is viewed as manageable and is actively planned for. But this has not always been the case. Before the 19^th century, tragedies such as disease, natural disasters, bad harvests, or deaths were seen as “acts of God.” With this providential origin, risk management was considered fruitless at best and morally wrong at worst. Perils were not to be managed, but were something you had to endure.

In his book Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Harvard University Press, 2012), historian Jonathan Levy traces the emergence of the modern concept of risk in 19^th-century America. Before the 19^th century, “risk” was a technical term used in marine insurance, Levy explains. It was the commodity bought to ensure financial compensation in the case of a “peril of the seas” or “act of God.” America, at the time, was largely rural and agricultural. This meant that most financial risk was handled informally through the diversification of assets, including land. Held assets rather than financial institutions provided a hedge.

Levy shows how the definition of risk evolved as commerce grew. Important factors in this process, he notes, included the end of slavery, the full advent of the Industrial Revolution, the development of the American West, and the rise of the American corporation.

In the 19^th century, recounts Levy, Americans had described the volatility of markets as “freaks of fortune.” “Freaks” were extreme, sudden, and unforeseeable turns of wealth, either good or bad. As attitudes and institutions evolved, individuals began looking to financial institutions for protection from these booms and busts. Savings accounts, life insurance, bond instruments, futures markets, and mutual aid societies were among the new financial technologies Americans came to rely on.

Levy illustrates this transformation through vivid case studies. He looks at a wide cast of representative characters, such as “the rebellious slave, the abolitionist actuary, the proslavery ideologue, the financial speculator, the farm housewife, the fraternal brother, the corporate executive.” In chapter three, for example, he examines Elizur Wright, Jr. (1804-1885), an abolitionist from northwest Connecticut and a leading figure in life insurance reform. After traveling to London in 1844, Wright initiated a campaign to prevent the development of a secondary marketplace in the United States where individuals could sell their life insurance policies. He became averse to this practice after witnessing free Englishmen reselling their life insurance policies at an outdoor auction block in London because they could not afford the premiums. The new holders of these policies would pay the premiums until the original individual died, at which point they would receive the benefits.

Wright sought to limit the commodification of human life in a free society, believing that it undermined a person’s self-ownership. Wright also developed the first American actuarial tables and played a key role in regulating other aspects of the life insurance industry. Thanks in part to his efforts, the value of active life insurance policies expanded dramatically in the 1860s from just over $100 million to more than $1 billion.

Levy also discusses the four million newly emancipated individuals who, after the Civil War, entered a capitalist economy. Their newly acquired freedom came with some additional responsibilities because they were now required to assume the full brunt of economic risk around their livelihood, with little institutional support. The vision of freedom that developed in this period, says Levy, connected self-determination to mastery over personal financial “risk.” But ironically, managing that risk often required a new form of dependence on financial corporations to which personal risk could be offloaded.

The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, known as Freedman’s Bank, was founded in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people save money and build financial security. Frederick Douglass, who was appointed president of the bank in its final years, reflected on the contrast between “Frederick the slave boy” and “Frederick, President of a bank counting its assets in the millions.” Regrettably, the bank collapsed in 1874, due to the prior year’s financial panic, highlighting how financial fortunes were still at the mercy of chance, but also, more significantly, of lingering systemic inequality. You can listen to Levy discussing some of these themes during a Kluge Center lecture here.

Levy wrote “Freaks of Fortune” in part as an American Council of Learned Societies Mellon Fellow at the Kluge Center in 2009. While at the Library, he drew from the papers of Frederick Douglass and Elizur Wright and from records of the Freedman’s Bank. The book received widespread acclaim, winning the 2013 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Ellis W. Hawley Prize, and Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians, and the 2013 Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974), one of the greatest American jazz composers, band leaders, and pianists of all time, was more than a musical innovator; he was also recognized as a “race leader,” earning international respect for American and Black music, argues Harvey G. Cohen in his acclaimed biography, Duke Ellington’s America (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Cohen’s book examines Ellington’s career as well as the historical and cultural dynamics of the America he helped create. Despite Ellington’s monumental success, he was not immune to the realities of discrimination and racism in early 20^th century America. Touring the South, Ellington and his orchestra rented three Pullman train cars for safety and shelter, as they faced rejection from hotels and restaurants. They endured intimidating encounters with law enforcement and even a bombing beneath their bandstand (no one was injured).

Ellington’s status as a “race leader” is a major theme of Duke Ellington’s America. Segregation permeated all aspects of the performing arts, yet even in the face of segregated radio, concerts, movies, and record stores, Ellington developed an unprecedented popularity with multiracial audiences. While he rarely spoke out publicly about civil rights or engaged in protests, Ellington enacted what Cohen calls “assertive yet nonconfrontational activism,” a tradition he learned from his Black middle-class community in Washington, DC.

Inspired by a community that emphasized achievement through hard work and resilience, Ellington undermined racial barriers through the music he created. He and his band presented a carefully cultivated, dignified appearance, writes Cohen, and the highest quality of artistry, challenging stereotypes with every performance.

Along with his first manager, Irving Mills, Ellington created a brand designed to subvert racialized stereotypes. One of their media campaigns promoted Ellington in venues and formats typically occupied by white performers and composers, and his image became a source of racial pride, cemented by Ellington’s global success, sold-out concerts, national magazine headlines, and radio and film appearances.

His music, too, powerfully celebrated African-American life and culture. In response to those who claimed he avoided civil rights issues, he told a trusted journalist, “They’ve not been listening to our music.”

According to Ellington, “social protest and pride in Black culture and history” were the most significant themes in his music. He often performed concerts to benefit Black causes, for example, Cohen recalls that he raised funds for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black youths who were falsely accused of raping two white women.

Ellington also helped elevate the self-perception of American culture. In the early twentieth century, American universities didn’t offer classes on American art, preferring instead to uphold European works. But by 1933, Ellington had achieved a reputation as a serious composer in both America and Europe.

Ellington thought of himself as both an entertainer and a serious composer, writes Cohen, and challenged the assumption that American or Black music could not be “high art.”

In his book, Cohen includes never-before-used sources, such as the Ellington business records held by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, as well as interviews with those closest to Ellington.

Cohen conducted research and wrote a first draft of “Duke Ellington’s America” as a Kluge Fellow in 2005. While at the Library, he used the Recorded Sound Research Center as well as the extensive collection of rare Ellington film and TV appearances held by the Library’s Moving Image Research Center.

Duke Ellington’s America was recognized as one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post and won the Outstanding Academic Title Award from CHOICE Magazine.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

More Library resources on Duke Ellington:

Jerry Valburn Collection on Duke Ellington, 1924-1989

William P. Gottlieb Collection – Photos of Duke Ellington Orchestra

Duke Ellington’s Film Debut

Film of Duke Ellington composing his symphony

During Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912), there was little structural or governmental support for those with mental illnesses. Even by 1918, there was still only one public asylum for the entire country, and 57 private hospitals in urban areas, housing a total of approximately 4,450 patients. Consequently, only the severest cases of “madness”—the broad term historian H. Yumi Kim uses to avoid modern connotations of mental illness and reflect historical Japanese social and cultural understanding—were typically treated in asylums. Responsibility for care fell primarily on families, especially women, who were socially expected and legally required to care for those considered mentally and spiritually disturbed.

Most studies around madness in this era focus on psychiatry and formal institutions. In her groundbreaking book “Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan (Oxford, 2022),” historian H. Yumi Kim instead centers the experiences of family, particularly female family members who disproportionately carried the burden of care.

Her book illuminates the hidden labor of women caring for those considered mad, as well as the creation of gendered understandings of madness. Each chapter explores a different physical or conceptual space, including “the rural village, farm household, urban marketplace, and courtroom.”

Kim recounts that Meiji lawmakers had envisioned reforming the country’s medical system to mirror those of Western cultures, with a wide-reaching system of hospitals and Western-trained physicians offering treatment to those with physical and mental ailments. However, because Japan lacked the resources to enact such dramatic and expensive institutional change, the government instead used law, ideology, and its bureaucracy to reinforce long-held practices of familial responsibility for the provision of care.

Unfortunately, this system often placed families in difficult situations. Families were sometimes required to provide care for mentally ill relatives who might pose a danger to themselves or others. This also had consequences for those being cared for. In rural areas, with limited access to institutional support, families sometimes confined relatives exhibiting violent or erratic behavior into wooden, cage-like structures within their homes, a practice that was state sanctioned and regulated.

When patients were confined, families were required to submit written requests to the local police and prefectural governor. The requests included information such as the reason for confinement, the dimensions of the cage-like rooms, and measures to ensure hygiene. The police were required by law to inspect these confinement rooms on a monthly basis.

It was primarily women, contends Kim, that carried the burden of labor, both emotional and physical, of looking after those who were confined in their homes. These same women also frequently navigated the bureaucratic process of obtaining legal permission for confinement.

As Kim notes, this system blurred the lines between care and neglect. Confinement was seemingly the best available option, but often was hard to distinguish from abandonment, and usually worsened a person’s mental and physical health.

Gender played a significant role in the understanding and diagnosis of madness in Meiji Japan. Men and women with similar symptoms, writes Kim, were often diagnosed with different ailments. In the town of Kita-Adachi in 1882, for example, madness was often attributed to “fox attachment.” This condition was believed to occur when a fox spirit attached itself to a human spirit and was linked to visiting shrines of Inari, a deity symbolized by the shape-shifting fox. Depending on religious and local cultural factors, attachment could also be attributed to a range of other animals, ghosts, or deities. State officials attempted to replace these beliefs with medical diagnoses.

Psychiatrist-ethnographers, sent to rural villages with high levels of fox attachment to conduct surveys, diagnosed those believed to be afflicted with specific diseases. However, when women and men presented the same symptoms, Kim explains, women were typically diagnosed with hysteria while men were assigned a wider variety of other possible ailments. Despite state officials’ efforts, the belief in fox attachment lasted long into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to Kim.

Gender also played a role in the assessment of criminal cases. When a woman was found to be guilty of a crime like murder, her responsibility was deemed to be dependent on factors such as pregnancy or menstruation, which Japanese forensic psychiatrists, lawyers, and criminologists thought diminished a woman’s ability to reason, hence driving them toward violent crimes. While some women capitalized on this reasoning to their advantage in court, others resisted gendered assumptions, pointing instead to factors like class, labor, and family situations.

By focusing on the experiences of women, Kim offers a more complete view of how care, madness, and family functioned in Meiji Japan, and how legacies of gendered understanding continue to shape caregiving and mental health policies in the country today.

Kim completed the research for Madness in the Family as a David B. Larson Fellow in Health and Spirituality at the John W. Kluge Center. Among many accolades, Madness in the Family received the 2023 John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History from the American Historical Association and the First Book Subvention Award from the Association for Asian Studies.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.

In 1999, Congress passed the House Awareness and Preservation Act, directing the Library of Congress to create a complete written narrative history of the House of Representatives. Often called the “People’s House,” the House nonetheless remains poorly understood by many Americans. This Act aimed to improve public understanding of the institution and to inspire members of Congress through a deeper appreciation for the House’s history.

The resulting book, The House: The History of the House of Representatives (Smithsonian Books, 2006), was written by celebrated historian Robert Remini. In 614 pages of engaging text, Remini delivered the first comprehensive narrative history of the House of Representatives, covering developments from the 1^st Congress in 1789 to the 108^th Congress in 2005.

Former Librarian of Congress James H. Billington selected Remini to tackle this monumental work, appointing him as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Kluge Center. The Center was within “easy reach” of “every “published and unpublished work concerning the House and its history,” said Remini. While at the Kluge Center, he used the Library’s manuscript collection, as well as congressional records, letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts. With the Capitol in easy walking distance, he also shadowed the then-Speaker of the House and interviewed many members of Congress.

This detailed history of the House, while written for the American people, was also meant to be useful to present and future representatives. The appendices, which give brief explanations of House operations such as electronic voting and the process of routing legislation through Congress are especially helpful to those new to the institution.

Throughout the book, Remini emphasizes the House’s achievements and capacity for self-improvement. In just two hundred years, notes Remini, what began as a group of 65 wealthy white men has expanded to include 435 men and women representing a variety of economic classes, races, and religions.

While intense partisan conflict in the House can sometimes feel unprecedented, Remini reminds readers that intense partisanship has been witnessed before and, in the future, can be overcome. For example, in 1838, a duel between Representative William J. Graves of Kentucky and Representative Jonathan Cilley of Maine led to Cilley’s unfortunate death. This tragic incident led to the outlawing of duels in Washington, D.C., the following year, in 1839.

Remini also highlights some of the House’s remarkable feats including the ending of slavery and of child labor, the creation of Social Security, and its guidance of the nation through the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society.

In 2004, Remini was awarded the Freedom Award from the United States Capitol Historical Society, and in 2005, he was appointed as the third Historian of the House of Representatives, a post which he held until 2010. The House: The History of the House of Representatives won the 2007 George Pendleton Prize from the Society for History in the Federal Government.

You can watch Remini discuss his book here.

This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.