Excerpt from Bartholdi Souvenir: A Sketch of the Colossal Statue Presented by France to the United States Among the gentlemen there gathered was one destined to crown his fame by linking his name with the consummation of the grandest idea of liberty this world ever witnessed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Buried within the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History exists an astonishing group of historical relics from the pre-Revolutionary War era to the present day, many of which have never been on display. Donated to the museum by generations of souvenir collectors, these ordinary objects of extraordinary circumstance all have amazing tales to tell about their roles in American history. Souvenir Nation presents fifty of the museum's most eccentric items. Objects include a chunk broken off Plymouth Rock; a lock of Andrew Jackson's hair; a dish towel used as the flag of truce to end the Civil War; the microphones used by FDR for his Fireside Chats; and the chairs that seated Nixon and Kennedy in their 1960 television debate.

The Paper Time Machine is a book that will change the way you think about the past.It contains 130 historical black-and-white photographs, reconstructed in colour and introduced by Wolfgang Wild – creator and curator of the Retronaut website. The site has become a global phenomenon, collecting images that collapse the distance between the past and present and tear a hole in our map of time. The Paper Time Machine goes even further. Early photographic technology lacked a crucial ingredient – colour. As early as the invention of the medium, skilled artisans applied colour to photographs by hand, attempting to convey the vibrancy and immediacy of life in vivid detail. In most cases this was crude and unconvincing. Until now. The time-bending images in The Paper Time Machine have been painstakingly restored and rendered in full and accurate colour by Jordan Lloyd of Dynamichrome, a company that has taken the craft of colour reconstruction to a new level. Each element of every photograph has been researched and colour-checked for historical authenticity. Behold American child labourers from the early twentieth century, alongside the construction of the Statue of Liberty. Marvel at crisp photographs from the Crimean War in 1855, balanced with never-before-seen pictures from the Walt Disney archive. As the layers of colour build up, the effect is disorientingly real and the decades and centuries fall away. It is as though we are standing at the original photographer’s elbow. This is a landmark photographic book – a collection of historical ‘remixes’ that exist alongside the original photographs but draw out qualities, textures and details that have hitherto remained hidden. Let The Paper Time Machine transport you. It is as close to time travel as we are ever likely to get.