Relatively few new books were added to the Columbian Exposition bookshelf this past year, but the small selection does cover several interesting topics. Three new academic works explore the Woman’s Building, model Haida Village, and Haiti Building and Frederick Douglass. A new children’s novel time-travels back to 1893.

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NONFICTION

Global Voices from the Women’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism and the Archive Marija Dalbello and Sarah Wadsworth (Editors). Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. 384 pages. Hardcover, $139.99. ISBN 9783031424892.

The Woman’s Building at the 1893 World’s Fair featured a library of writing by women. Of the more than 8,000 volumes, 3,000 came from authors outside the United States. This collection of thirteen research papers by feminist scholars are grouped in sections on “Reading (Across) the National Collections,” “Gender and Modernism,” and “Close Readings: Authoring Female Agency.” This latest scholarship on the Woman’s Building library complements studies works by Wadsworth and Wiegand (Right Here I See My Own Books, 2012) and Weimann (The Fair Women, 1981).

Skidegate House Models: From Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World’s Fair and Beyond by Robin K. Wright. University of Washington Press, 2024. 224 pages. Hardcover, $49.95. ISBN 9780295751047.

Seventeen artists from the village of Skidegate (HlGaagilda Llnagaay) on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, were commissioned to carve a model of their village for the 1893 World’s Fair. The Skidegate model, featuring twenty-nine large houses and forty-two poles, is the only known model village in North America carved by nineteenth-century Indigenous residents of the village it portrayed. The exhibit provided a means for Haida people to preserve their history and culture.

Wanted! A Nation!: Black Americans and Haiti, 1804-1893 by Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, Translated by C. Jon Delogu. University of Georgia Press, 2023. 292 pages. Hardcover, $114.95. ISBN 9780820365893. Paperback $32.95. ISBN 9780820362700.

This study of the role of nineteenth-century Haiti in the formation of African American identity includes a chapter on “Haiti and Frederick Douglass at the Chicago World’s Fair.” As a Commissioner for Haiti, Douglass had an international platform at the Exposition, which helped Black people who faced discrimination at home to fight first against slavery and the slave trade, and then for equal rights.

CHILDRENS / YOUNG ADULT

World’s Worst Time Machine: Treasure in the White City by Dustin Brady. Illustrated by Dave Bardin. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2024. 232 pages. Paperback, $11.99. ISBN 9781524884314.

According to legend, an eccentric millionaire hid a treasure somewhere inside the White City. This second installment in Brady’s series, Elsa and Liam continue their time travels to uncover secrets on the fairgrounds in 1893 Chicago.