JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I purchased this volume of House of Representatives reports from 1856 a number of years ago, mostly for the extraordinary bookplate that appears on the front cover of the double-brick-sized volume. It is about as big a bookplate as I’ve bumped into or seen in 30+ years of bookselling (though admittedly the folks in the sciences seem overall to have less interest in bookplates for their library as non-science readers/collectors, so my viewpoint may be problematic). Still, it is a big bookplate, about 5×7 inches, and as I said is on the outside of the volume rather than on the front inside cover. There was no mistaking to whom the volume belonged, until now, when it belongs to the non-House-of-Representatives-me–anyway it is quite an object.
