Alabama Booksmith

One of his greatest achievements as an editor was The Diaries of Adam and Eve, by Mark Twain. The American legend rewrote a remarkably contemporary Adam and Eve. In tackling the first three chapters of Genesis, Twain creates a story of The First Couple who are psychologically familiar to even 21st Century Americans. He wrote the Diaries as a tribute to his own marriage, so they are also his most heartfelt and personal work. Between 1893 and 1906, he attempted six versions; only these satisfied him and were published in his lifetime.

Don's latest book is Rockwell Kent: The Art of the Bookplate, in which Don serves as skillful midwife to the rebirth of a once-famous polymath and gadfly. During the first half of the twentieth century Rockwell Kent's (1882-1971) notoriety rested on his reputation as a brilliant conversationalist, author, adventurer, and political activist. He was also a first-class provocateur.

What most do not know about Kent, and what Roberts' rectifies with this beautifully rendered book, was his gift as an accomplished illustrator of bookplates. Over a span of half a century Kent designed more than 160 bookplates for the famous and not-so-famous. Each bookplate reflected its owner's personality and ethos, and Kent considered each design to be "a personal matter", almost as a doorway to the life of ideas and imagination. Roberts shows that the seemingly mundane matter of a bookplate can give rise to a strange, but beautiful, communion between artist and client.