Member ABVR(he, him, his)

7,070 Books 9 Collections 271 Reviews 31 Recommendations

Collections: All collections (7,069), Your library (2,558), Wishlist (345), To read (778), Currently reading (2), Read but unowned (3,143), Kindle (41), Paused (7), Sale & Swap (96), Weeded (1,082)
Tags: @Garage (1,345), science fiction (1,063), American history (886), read 1990-2003 (773), popular culture (700), mystery fiction (605), 20C (549), @Living Room (513), World War II (482), @Bedroom (460), thriller fiction (459), read in grad school (431), military history (412), history of science (408), 19C (401), British history (372), read in high school (354), space travel (348), read in college (346), history of technology (338), @Office (327), film history & criticism (322), aviation history (294), historical fiction (245), maritime history (242), American culture (209), science (207), naval history (190), military aviation (189), Massachusetts (187), Martha's Vineyard (176), STS (175), geology (166), private detective (166), society (161), American politics (155), cultural history (153), British literature (151), DNF (149), naval fiction (141), fantasy fiction (141), technological disasters (140), read pre-high school (138), biography (133), military fiction (132), maritime 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Groups: Books in 2025: The Future of the Book World, Combiners!, Crime, Thriller & Mystery, History Fans, History: On learning from and writing history, Hobnob with Authors, Legacy Libraries, Librarians who LibraryThing, Librarything Series, Non-Fiction Readers, Science!, Used Books, Writer-readers
Joined: Nov 12, 2005

Real Name

A. Bowdoin Van Riper

About My Library

My LibraryThing catalog is mostly books on history, science, technology, and popular culture, along with a lot of classic science fiction, pre-1920 British poetry, maritime history, mysteries & thrillers. There are also clumps of books about language, mass media, constitutional law, baseball, archaeology, yacht racing, and Antarctic exploration, among other things.

My catalog includes all the books I've read from 2004 to the present (tagged "read in 20XX") and some of those I read in in 2003 and earlier. The books I read pre-2004 are tagged with "read in ________" tags that indicate (approximately) when. The older the category, the less complete the coverage.

My collections are of the "what it says on the can" variety, with two (possible) exceptions:

Weeded books are ones I found interesting enough to own once, got rid of without reading them, but (because of that initial interest) still feel a connection to.

Sale & Swap books are ones I currently have posted for sale on Amazon Marketplace or available for trade on BookMooch or PaperbackSwap; they're in my possession, but don't feel like part of "My Library."

I also maintain an entirely separate LT account (user ID: Silverheels) as a sort of secondary wishlist -- a way to keep track of books that I'm not immediately interested in reading or buying, but want to remember are out there.

About Me

After 22 years as a history professor, I'm now having one of those second acts that F. Scott Fitzgerald said don't exist in American life. I've worked. since 2014, for the Martha's Vineyard Museum, where I'm reference librarian, pinch-hitting archivist, in-house historian, and one-person Department of Interpretation. Born and raised in southern New England, I'm back there -- living in my childhood (summer) home -- after 27 years spent in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and South: an unreconstructed Yankee who loves the sea, the snow, bay scallops, and good clam chowder. For the demographically curious, I . . . was born in 1963, am the son of a teacher and a social worker, am 6' 3" tall, am left-handed, attended public schools, have a PhD (University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1990) drive an dark purple Buick Encore, sail a vintage 21-foot racing sloop, and have owned eight Macintosh computers since 1987.

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