1776 has been a magic number in the American psyche for 250 years. Why? It’s not the date of the worst-brewed cup of tea of all time in Boston harbor (1773) or the first fights for freedom (1775) or the last (1783). Indeed, Americans were champing at the bit of autarky at least since the 1750’s. The Seven Years’/French-and-Indian War of 1756–1763 was, arguably, the real detonation of colonial mercantilism; might (argue thousands of undergraduates a year) the War of Independence just have been an aftershock? Why 1776, then? This bisesquicentennial — please forgive my sophomoric sesquipedalianism, but I prefer that construction; I suppose I should be grateful we’re using Latin at all and not, say, emoji — marks, quite simply, the publication of one of the great American essays.

The books and maps of the American Revolution are a core of our collections at Arader. In honor of America 250, we present the books and maps that trace the route to Independence.

Arader’s maps illustrating that tortuous ebb and flow have enjoyed pride of place in the old salon of 1016 Madison, but as the resident bibliophile, it’s my pleasure to present some of the actual treaties and decrees that shaped and grew from the lines more-or-less faithfully represented on maps. This survey of laws is an homage to my recently-retired colleague Michael Foley Esq., lawyer-cum-cartophile, who for 14 years charted a fine course for his devoted clientèle as well as for me. His passion for the mapping of the American South inspired my own. Thanks, Mike.

Cities — even eternal ones — change wildly over even small periods; the volatility of humanity is magnified in them. These images invite slow looking, which we see daily here in our Madison Avenue gallery. Hopefully this list — spanning some five centuries — yields an opportunity to pause and to contemplate the dazzling expanse of urban iconography.

There can be just three modes of using a surface to print on paper: relief (that is, everything removed from the surface doesn’t print), intaglio (only what’s removed from the surface prints) and planographic (the surface is not carved but treated to make some parts print and others not).

This is the first in a series of three essays exploring those three modes. We’ll begin with the first, which is also the oldest (though all three are still in use): relief printing. Readers may even have made relief prints in Kindergarten: potato stamps, in which only what’s left on the surface of a split potato prints. Potatoes being latecomers to Europe (as well as good for eating), wood is the commoner medium. It was ubiquitous, easily worked, relatively cheap and durable; therefore woodcuts emerged with the printed book as the way to incorporate image with text. Crucially, relief prints are compatible with letterpress, such that a forme (the group of pages printed on one side of a sheet of paper) that contained text and images could be printed in a single pull, using moderate pressure.