Throughout their 50-year-old business and partnership, Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern have traveled from the grand libraries of aristocracy to the back alleys of Europe in their search for legendary, lost, and little-known treatises, some of which have led to major contemporary developments in sociology, psychology, medicine, science, engineering and politics.
On Thursday, October 14, 6:30 p.m. Rostenberg and Stern will celebrate the publication of New Worlds in Old Books (Oak Knoll Press) at New York University’s Fales Library, 3rd floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South. The event, co-sponsored by the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science, is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Call (212) 998-2596.
The works described in New Worlds in Old Books span more than 400 years and often foreshadow the future: for example, the authors recall Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s description of inoculation, then known as engrafting, as a cure for smallpox. Other “finds” include material related to arthritis and allergies, the linking of the Continent and Great Britain by tunnel, and the Theory of Relativity.
Eighty-seven and eighty-four years old, respectively, Rostenberg and Stern have been rare book dealers for over half a century. They have co-authored six books about books, including Old Books, Rare Friends.