Favorite purchase from my first-ever trip to Commonwealth Books the other day. I’ve wanted to get my hands on more Northern Renaissance material for a while, and this book rules. Beyond the amazingly primitive color-print frontispiece of Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait, the text has such a great conversational tone, e.g., “A ‘Madonna and Child,’ No. 774, is a charming picture usually given to [Dirk] Bouts, and as no one knows for certain who painted it, we may as well consider and enjoy it under his name.”

Letter from former C.I.A. director Richard Helms to his three year-old son Dennis, personal stationery of Adolf Hitler, 1945.

“Dear Dennis, the man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe - three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat - a boon to mankind. But thousands died that it might be so. The price for ridding society of bad is always high. Love, Daddy”