Mordecai K. Rosenfeld writes: “I have published my sixth book of personal essays, My Ivy Library (this one is self-published). These 18 pieces will, I hope, make you think and laugh. Writing about an earlier collection, novelist Dee Brown wrote: ‘Clarity, humor, and grace distinguish the essays of Mordecai Rosenfeld… No matter the mood in which it may be written, any Rosenfeld essay can be a tonic to restore the spirits,” and essayist Louis Auchincloss, who wrote the foreword to my first two collections, wrote that I have ‘a sharp eye and a biting wit.’ I suggest that this book merits the same good vibes. The principal essay in this collection is about my own library of some 2,500 books on a wide range of subjects, including many from the John Carter Brown Library. I still have the Brown University General Catalog 1947-48 sent to all incoming freshmen and the Bulletin of General Information for Applications for Admission (with a cover picture of William Rogers, Brown’s first student, who entered in 1765 and graduated in 1769). My wife Paula and I still live in Greenwich Village. I’ve graduated from a cane to a walker, but these days the pandemic keeps me mostly at home.”
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Class of 1951