Rare Finds – A Guide to Rare Book Collecting

A book can be the product of an obsessive drive for knowledge and a descent—for months or even years—into a sort of madness. T.E. Lawrence went to the desert, becoming Lawrence of Arabia and eventually writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom set out to catalogue the birds of America in painstaking detail and created, at great personal cost, the finest plate book ever made. Thomas McKenney, George Catlin and Edward Curtis were each driven to preserve the history of the Native Americans before their way of life vanished. Each produced magnificently illustated epic works that constitute our only remaining records of many tribes. Richard Burton and Ernest Shackleton were similarly in thrall to consuming spirits of adventure, writing of everything from swords to dog-sledding, infiltrating the Hajj to navigating the ice of the South Polar Ocean. Wherever their seemingly mad quests took them, Bauman Rare Books can help you follow, pointing you toward rare books so beautiful and captivating that you may well develop an obsession of your own.