Past Meetings

2010-2021

(2020 and 2021 will be updated soon)

2020

4 March 

Gregory Williams, “Building a Statewide Digital & Archival Collaboration: the CSU Japanese-American Digitization Project” 

 

5 February

Michael Vinson, “А Rare Вооk Rogue in Техas: Тhе Crimеs and Misdemeanors of Johnny Jenkins”

 

8 January

J. David Archibald, “Books on a Boat: The Library on Darwin’s 1831-36 Voyage Aboard the HMS Beagle”

2019

4 December

David Boule, “King Citrus, Collecting and the Dream of California”

 

6 November

Kim Coventry, ”Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications that Shaped the City and Its Image” 

 

2 October

Jim Tranquada, “What the Hell Is ‘Ukulele Literature’?”

 

5 June

Elizabeth Pomeroy, “Glen Dawson, Mountaineer and Bookman”

 

1 May

George Rossman“A Journey to the Source of the Jade”

 

3 April

Henry (Nick) Ervin, “A Brief Bibliographic and Photographic Tour of California’s Desert Lands”

 

6 March

Helena de Lemos, “From One Reader to Another: The story of May Lamberton Becker, author and creator of popular early twentieth-century newspaper column, ‘The Reader’s Guide,’ and her daughter Beatrice Warde, author, typography scholar, and marketing manager for the British Monotype Corporation”

 

6 February

J.C. McElveen, “Planning and Curating an Exhibit on Nineteenth Century American Westward Exploration: An Amateur’s Perspective”

 

2 January

Rand Boyd, “Let’s Make Believe We’re Soldiers: American Juvenile Series Fiction and the First World War”

2018

5 December 

“Breaking the Glassine Ceiling”. Zamorano Celebrates 90: Honoring the Contributions of Women to Books and Book Collecting in Southern California. Book presentation by the publications committee

 

7 November

James R. Phillips, “Robinson Jeffers & Five California Master Printers”

 

3 October

David Grabhorn, “Indiana Roots of the Grabhorn Press”

 

6 June

David Rips, “The History of Science and Medicine: Acquisitions Update 2017-May 2018”

 

2 May

John Wilkins (1614-1672), “We Are the 17th Century”. Channelled by Stephen White

  

4 April

Dennis Kruska, “The Lure and Lore of Yosemite: A 19th-Century View”

 

7 March

David Brafman, “Flowers, Drugs, Chemicals, and Colors, or How Botanical Books Changed the World”

 

7 February

Randy Tarpey-Schwed, “Cookery & Connections: A Collector’s Passion”

 

3 January

Laura Skandera Trombley, “If I Had a Camel: The Sesquicentennial of Innocents Abroad

2017

6 December

David Gunther, “Life on the Santa Fe as Seen through Publications”

 

1 November

Aleta George, “Ina Coolbrith’s Poetic Origins: How the pueblo of Los Angeles played a significant role in the life of California’s first poet laureate”

 

4 October

Nick Curry, “The Rockefeller Largesse”

 

7 June

David Rips, “The History of Science and Medicine: Acquisitions Update 2012-2016”

3 May

David Brafman, “Sacred Geometry and Slimy Sludge, or, Making Art with Alchemy”

5 April

Kitty Maryatt, “Re-Creation: Sonia Delaunay’s & Blaise Cendrars’ La Prose du Transsibérien of 1913” 

1 March 

Simon Winchester, “The Professor and the Madman: The Making of a Bestseller”

1 February

Marc Kuritz, “Churchill: Language, Life, and Leadership”

4 January 

Suzanne Muchnic, “Temple on the Tar Pits: A Sticky History of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art”

2016

7 December

Scott Stine, “The Marvels and Wisdom of Zenas Leonard’s Narrative”

2 November 

James Keeline, “Building a Series Book” (last-minute stand-in for Andrea Mays) 

5 October

Stephen White, “Karl Marx, Mark Twain, and the Advent of Social Media”

1 June

Mark Hall-Patton, “Wanna Get Lucky? A Mass-Market Collection of a Mass-Market Town. Books as Popular-Culture Artifacts in a Museum Collection”

4 May

Sharon Gee, “Fair Warning! Auction Secrets Revealed”

6 April

Gary Kurutz, “From 49ers to Sourdoughs: Literary Excursion into the First and Last Great Western Gold Rushes by Gary F. Kurutz, a Cheechako Bibliographer in the Klondike”

2 March 

Lori Anne Ferrell, “Piety, Greed, and Bibliomania: How the Victorians Invented English History”

3 February

Phil Brigandi, “Searching for Ramona: The Literature and Lore of Southern California’s Most Famous Novel”

6 January

Dana Gioia, “Creating America’s Book Club: The Story of NEA’s Big Read”

2015

2 December

Alan Jutzi, “Stories of a Rare Book Curator”

4 November

Diana Kormos-Buchwald, “Einstein’s Three Winters at Caltech” 

 

7 October 

Romy Wyllie, “Caltech’s Architectural Heritage” 

 

3 June 

Laura Rips, “‘All in One Lifetime’: Collecting the History of Science—Bern Dibner and the Burndy Library”

 

6 May 

Li Wei Yang,“The Yongle Dadian: An Emperor’s Encyclopedia”

 

1 April

Robert Palazzo, “The Integration of Major-League Baseball: Books, Publications, and Ephemera (It’s not just Jackie Robinson)”

 

4 March

Nicholas Basbanes, “Among the Gently Mad: A Fellowship of Books and Book People”

 

4 February

Nancy Turner, “Encounters with the Scissormen: Treating Illuminated Cuttings and Leaves from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Conservation Studio”

 

7 January

Simon Loxley, “Frederic Warde: The Gatsby of Type”

 

2014

3 December

Bill Warren, “Will W. Robinson, Twinkly-Eyed Southern California Historian, Author, and Zamoranan Extraordinaire”

 

5 November 

Paul Bryan Gray, “Gatekeeper to Diaz, 1876-1911”

 

1 October

Megan Rosenbloom, “Death in Rare Books”

 

4 June

Donald Sterrenburg, “Laudatus: Birth of a Typeface”

 

7 May

Kim Keeline, “Collecting Shakespeare: The Commodification of a Writer”

 

2 April

Msgr. Francis Weber, “Zamorano Memories”

 

5 March

Charles Johnson, “The Curious Case of George M. Millard, Books, El Paseo de la Guerra, Santa Barbara”

 

5 February

Chuck Rennie, “Sex, Science, and Sardines: Reality and Myth in the Steinbeck-Ed Ricketts Friendship and its Literature”

 

8 January 

David Kalifon, “Peutinger’s Tabula Itineraria: Exploring an Ancient Roman Road Map through Ortelius’s 1598 Facsimile”

 

2013

4 December

Richard Wagener, “Engraving Books”

 

6 November

Jeff Groves, “A Hands-On Approach to Printing History: Building a Replica of an Eighteenth-Century Printing Press”

 

2 October

Steven Hackel, “The Rock and the Crucifix: Changing Representations of Serra over Time”

 

5 June

Dennis Kruska, “The Lure and Lore of Yosemite: A 19th-Century View”

1 May

Gary Strong, “Collecting Los Angeles at the UCLA Library”

 

3 April

Elizabeth Pomeroy, “What Makes San Marino, San Marino? Looking for Answers in Geography, Books, and Lives”

 

6 March 

Jake Wien, “Paul Landacre and Ward Ritchie: 25 Years of Inspired Collaboration, 1932-1957”

 

6 February 

Jennifer Watts, “A Strange and Fearful Interest: The Making of a Civil War Exhibition”

 

2 January 

Judy Harvey Sahak, “Shadows in Southern California, 1933: Forgotten Visits of T.S. Eliot, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Um… Er… Ah” 

 

2012

5 December 

Larry Burgess, “Christmas in Old California”

 

7 November 

Stephen White, “Skydreamers: A Pathway to the Universe”

 

3 October 

Stephen Shepherd, “Marginal Images as Scholarly Commentary in a 15th-Century Anglo-Irish Manuscript”

 

6 June

Dennis Kruska, “Glen Dawson and the High Sierra: A Man to Match the Mountains”

 

2 May 

Beth Gates Warren, “Edward Weston’s Los Angeles”

 

4 April

Paul Bryan Gray,“The Emergence and Exile of Francisco P. Ramírez, an Early Los Angeles Activist”

 

7 March 

Susan Allen, “John I. Perkins (1863-1942) Collects: The Kelmscott Press for Los Angeles”

 

1 February

Charles Johnson, “A Tale of Two Men: The Origins of Printing in Alta California”

 

4 January 

Seth Lerer, “On a 15th-Century Book of Hours”

 

2011

7 December

Shelley Erwin, “The Art of the Map”

 

2 November 

Laura Skandera Trombley, “Mark Twain’s World Celebrity”

 

5 October

Marcella Ruble and Timothy Lindsay, “Beverly Hills’ First Estate: The House and Gardens of Virginia and Harry Robinson”

 

1 June 

Barbara Kesel, “Comics: A Small Medium Gets Large”

 

4 May 

Dennis Casebier, “Oral History in an Empty Land”

 

6 April 

Kitty Maryatt, “The Gutenberg Page”

 

2 March 

O.M. Brack, “Sam Johnson as a Collector”

 

2 February 

Peggy Lobnitz, “Alice Eastwood Behind the Hand Lens: California’s Celebrated Botanist and Author”

 

5 January 

Mario Molina, “Men and Books: Some Gems from the Medical Library” 

 

2010

1 December

David Brafman, “Mystical Memory in the Manly Hall Collection”

 

3 November

Robert Palazzo, “Sam Dunham, Captain Jack, and Alaska Gold Rush Poets”

 

6 October

James Keeline, “The Mystery of the Stratemeyer Syndicate: The Origins of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew” 

 

2 June

Mark Roosa, “Gathering Malibu: The Rancho and Beyond”

 

5 May

Anne Willan, “Cookbooks in History from 1474-1820: A Personal View”

 

7 April

Romy Wyllie, “Bertram Goodhue: Architect and Master of Many Arts”

 

3 March

Michael Geer, “Repairing Books and Manuscripts”

 

3 February

William G. Donohoo, “Opening the Vaults”

 

 

Zamorano Lecture speakers at the Huntington:

2017Stephen Orgel 
2016Columba Stewart
2015Matthew Fisher 
2014Nick Wilding 
2013David Schalkwyk 
2012David Szewczyk
2011David Hall
2010Michael Winship
2009Peter Stallybrass
2008Robert Darnton