boxcar dreamers

Milestone Monday

On this day, March 30 in 1867, United States Secretary of State William H. Seward finalized the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, about two cents per acre. Ultimately, Alaska became the 49th state in 1959.

To commemorate this massive addition to the United States, we present illustrations by noted American artist Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) from his 1920 publication Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska, printed at The Knickerbocker Press and published in New York and London by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1920. The text is based on Rockwell's actual journal of his time in Alaska from 1918-1919 living in a primitive cabin with his 9-year old son, also named Rockwell, on an island near Seward, Alaska (named after William Seward, of course).

Phil Ochs, c. 1965

Coronation Celebrations — Chipping Norton, England, 1911

A vibrant street scene from Chipping Norton, captured during the nationwide celebrations of the Coronation of George V and Mary.

The façade of G.O.E. Herbert’s Tea & Dining Rooms is richly adorned with Union Jack flags and royal banners, proudly displaying the message “God Save the King.”

Such decorations were a common sight across Britain as towns and communities came together to mark the coronation.

Outside the shop, locals gather—shopkeepers, women in period dress, and children with bicycles—offering a vivid glimpse into everyday life during this historic moment.

In an interview, Tartt lists her favorite authors and the names of a few works. I have listed the most popular works from each author and the specific ones she recommended as well.

Homer

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Greek Poets and Tragedians

Argonautica

Antigone

Prometheus Bound

The Oresteia

Medea

Oedipus Rex

The Bacchae

The Frogs

Dante

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

Shakespeare

“I went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic”

Macbeth

Hamlet

Dickens

“Dickens was a part of my familial landscape, the air I breathed.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Nabokov

Pale Fire

Lolita

Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment

The Brothers Karamazov

Yeats

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

Borges

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth

Ethan Frome

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

Helena

Salinger

Catcher in the Rye

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

Orlando

Edward St. Aubyn

The Patrick Melrose Novels

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

Norwegian Wood

Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Don DeLillo

White Noise

Underworld

W.G. Sebald

Austerlitz

The Rings of Saturn

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

The White Album

Other Specific Books

Memoirs d’Outre-Tome by Chateaubriand

Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski

O AGENTE SECRETO - THE SECRET AGENT (2025)