Adopt-a-Book

Adanson was a French naturalist who traveled to Senegal on an exploring expedition. Senegal was unexplored, due to its unhealthy climate, but Adanson spent 5 years there, collecting specimens, producing detailed maps, making systematic meteorological and astronomical observations, and preparing grammars and dictionaries of the languages spoken.

Limited edition artist's book. Special Collections' copy is number 7 of 100. Signed by the artist. The book consists of 5 kites, each representing an element; instructions for assembling and flying the kite; and a poem, "Ten Thousand Things", by Melinda Kennedy.

A narrative written by the captain of the Commerce, which was shipwreched off the coast of the Western Sahara in 1815; the crew and their captain were taken captive by the Sahrawi, a nomadic tribe, and sold to Moorish merchantmen, who enslaved them, transported them to the Sahara Desert, and subjected them to horrible mistreatment. They eventually escaped and made their way back to the United States. The narrative is also the first reliable account of many then-unknown countries and "savage" tribes.

Pierre Gassendi was a French philosopher, priest, astronomer and mathematician, and is best known for publishing the first data on the transit of the planet Mercury, and as one of the first intellectuals to employ both skepticism and empiricism in his writing. This text is one of Gassendi's major works on astronomy.

Hadrianus Junius was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, antiquarian, historiographer, emblematist, school rector, and Latin poet. Batavia was one of his major works--a history of Holland comprised of a number of individual and antiquarian histories. It was first printed in 1588 (USC's copy is an example of this first printing).

18th century edition of the first full German language translation of the Bible produced by Martin Luther. The translation was based not on the Latin Vulgate translation but on original Hebrew and Greek texts. The publishers of this edition, Johann and Christian Cotta, were members of a storied German publishing family who managed a publishing house and printing press founded in 1659.

Limited edition artists’ book. Consists of poems and glyphs. From the colophon: "These poems were translated from hieroglyphic sequences generated by chance...."

Limited edition artists’ book. Special Collections' copy is number 19 of 60. Printed on hand-made paper.

Limited edition artists' book. Special Collections' copy is number 57 of 250. From the colophon: "Invited to 2nd China Open in 2001. Started in Beijing and by bus train and foot ended up somewhere inside Sichuan province in the middle of nowhere. This book is a compilaton of images of my travels and explorations in a vast landscape culminating in my performance: 'Cleaning in China'.

A universal chronology summarizing the events from Christ to 1566, including descriptions of Columbus, Magellan, Vespucci and the discovery of America, and the Reformation. Genebrand was a French Benedictine theological writer and professor of Hebrew and Scripture at the Royal College in Paris; among his students was St. Francis de Sales.